Walking Dead (11 page)

But for the moment all Foxe saw was an over-arching darkness beneath which on the flood-lit arena was a kind of crude encampment through which men moved. Foxe's words came back as echo, hovering in the dark.

“I won't do it.”

3

N
egotiations. No doubt, Foxe slowly realised, this had all been foreseen—not in exact detail of how he would behave, but as far as the need to weaken him with loss of sleep and to disorientate him with sudden changes from horror to luxury and back, from sympathy to insolence. They sat, Foxe and Captain Angiah, in a small room above the castle gateway, part office, part bedroom with filing cabinets along one wall, a table with an ancient typewriter in the middle, and beneath the window a mattress and tousled blankets. The place smelt of sour old sweat, and tobacco, and stale food, all mixed with the more excremental odours of the courtyard. Captain Angiah never lost his monotonous calm, but Foxe's own voice slithered uncontrollably along the gamut between scream and wheedle. Occasionally this antiphone was varied by the Prime Minister's bass coming through the radio set. Foxe didn't know how much he listened, but Angiah sometimes seemed unable to contact him to settle a point—or pretended to be.

Foxe had always refused to read stories, whether fact or fiction, about torture and interrogation, or to listen to victims, however brave and worthy, talking about their experiences on radio or TV. Why should he be got at with other people's sufferings? Even so, despite this willed ignorance, he was aware that a bond tends to build up between oppressor and oppressed, and was only surprised by the speed with which this happened. He could detect no sign of response to his feeling in Captain Angiah, who maintained throughout a formality which became yet more punctilious the more obscene were the threats and pressures he had to apply. At first Foxe longed for some flicker of feeling to show in the fine, ascetic countenance—rage or impatience would have done—anything to prove that the man was more than a totally neutral tool in the hands of the monster at the other end of the radio link. Then, slowly, he began to persuade himself that the relationship wasn't like that—not monster/tool/victim but monster/victim/victim—that Doctor Trotter had set them down in this arena as gladiators, so that he could watch the contest with Olympian amusement. If so, Captain Angiah was fighting with a far more admirable style than Foxe, stoic and professional in his degradation. Discovering this, Foxe managed to pull himself together a little. Perhaps it wasn't true. Perhaps the Captain was enjoying his work. But even imagining that he might not be was a help.

The descent into the pit lay along the traditional helix, spiralling down. While Foxe believed that his choice lay between doing what Doctor Trotter wanted and enduring for a few weeks the kind of jail Mr Palamine had described, it had been fairly easy to continue to refuse. But slowly Captain Angiah, without directly telling him, let him become aware that there were a number of ways in which Ladyblossom's murder might be solved, and that the choice of whom to accuse and the verdict of the court lay completely within the Prime Minister's whim. He even referred to Foxe's talk with Mr Trotter the herbalist as evidence of Foxe's interest in magical practices. Other witnesses could be found. A snake-apple could be discovered in Foxe's flat. Charley would say that his wife knew Foxe for a powerful witch … so the weeks could be months, years … ah, no, there was no death penalty on the Islands, but nobody was immortal. Men died, slowly or suddenly … and wasn't the court likely to consider Foxe's refusal to take part in a scientific experiment as evidence of his conversion to magical practices?

The first step down the spiral had seemed hypothetical. Suppose Foxe were to agree to conduct the experiment, then what would his conditions be? It must have taken almost an hour for Captain Angiah to coax and bully Foxe past that point, and then he was walking down the slope. He had agreed. All he could do now was safeguard his position as far as possible. The subjects must be genuine volunteers. If less than twenty forthcoming, Foxe to return to Hog's Cay under house arrest. Foxe to have complete charge of the experiment—no guard, police officer or other person to address, contact or discipline in any way any of the subjects of the experiment, except as specifically ordered to by Doctor Foxe. The drugs administered to be only those already supplied by the Company, etc., etc., etc.

While Captain Angiah typed the agreement out on the ancient machine, Foxe ate a pappy roll and greasy hamburger, and thought. He tried to pin his mind down to further safeguards. Secrecy first; if that was broken, proof that he'd been blackmailed into this fix; proof that he thought the experiment harmless; proof that the subjects were volunteers. The headline ran threading through all his thoughts:
Prison Camp Doctor Conducts Human Experiments.
Now, Doctor Foxe, you claim that you were forced into this situation. But surely …

His digestive juices seemed to make no contact with his meal, which lay in his stomach like a stone. He had stopped asking himself, Why me? because now half-knew the answer. The Prime Minister was not merely interested in Foxe's experiment on the prisoners, he was also conducting his own experiment on Foxe. He had chosen his victim that morning at the laboratory, because of something that Foxe represented, something perhaps that Foxe had said to Mrs Trotter—not a logical choice, of course, but a sudden, passionate interest, like love at first sight.

The Captain pulled the paper out of the machine, read it slowly and passed it across the table. The sentences were meaningless, read by Foxe's prickling eyes like words in a dream, but not reaching his brain. He put his hand in his pocket to look for his pen but found Quentin instead. Quentin had slept since breakfast, but now seemed to be stirring, so Foxe lifted him onto the table to clear up the crumbs, but he seemed more concerned to witness Foxe's signature. Foxe wrote his name in an angry scrawl. Captain Angiah added his, slow and clear but surprisingly florid. As if adding a seal Quentin excreted neatly onto the paper. Quite right. That was about what it was worth.

The arena where the prisoners were kept was called the Pit. Once you were down in it, standing on its sand-strewn floor, the glare seemed less—certainly less than the afternoon sun in the castle courtyard. The overarching dark lay close above, making the gallery invisible behind the lights; it was impossible to tell whether one was being watched by twenty guards, or two, or none.

“Do they all speak English?” said Foxe.

“Yeh. Some of them may pretend not to understand you.”

“OK. Thanks. Now I'm going to need an assistant, somebody who can read and write and add up. Not a guard or a soldier. Shall I pick one out of this lot?”

“No,” said Captain Angiah firmly. “The Prime Minister says they've got to be all in the experiment.”

“Provided they volunteer.”

“Sure. I'll get you a prisoner from outside.”

“Fine. Now will you go back to the gallery, please?”

“I better stay here, Doctor.”

Foxe's hand seemed too tired to quiver as he snatched the agreement from his pocket and thrust it under Captain Angiah's monstrous nostrils, pointing at clause (iv). For the first time that day Captain Angiah smiled; he nodded to the two armed guards who had accompanied them to the floor of the pit and led the way up the flight of wooden steps to the gallery. Foxe waited till they had reached the top and with a squeak of pulleys and creak of hemp the steps were hauled up into the dark. Then he turned to the silent prisoners, paraded in three ranks in front of him.

“Perhaps you would all sit down,” he said.

The large eyes stared at him from drawn and sunken faces. Nobody stirred. A voice bellowed out of the darkness.

“Siddown, yah black bastards, when the white man telling you.”

As the ranks collapsed to the sand Foxe turned.

“Captain Angiah?”

“I am still here,” said the darkness.

“Will you see that the guards understand their new orders? Interference of that kind will make the experiment valueless.”

Slowly Foxe turned to face the prisoners, aware that for almost the first time that day he had spoken with real confidence. This glaring arena was now his laboratory, the world where he was himself, solid, in control. He was aware too of a strange surge of excitement, far below the rational level, at the prospect before him. Reason might surface in the end—it might, for instance be possible to set something up which paralleled a known animal experiment closely enough for actual comparisons to be made—probably nothing quantifiable, and of course never publishable, but still an experience, an insight, a colour that might tinge future experiments, back in the sane world where rats were rats and you could do what you chose with them.

He looked along the ranks. Four-fifths males—that was good. A few impossible to sex at a glance. Condition poor—in fact appalling by normal laboratory standards. But the starved eyes seemed bright, watchful, interested. His own eyes locked to a particular glance, a hard, strong face surrounded by a frizz of tight-curled hair, the eyes sunken and very dark, a look both withdrawn and speculative. He stopped inspecting a group of laboratory animals and realised that he still had to make contact with each individual mind. Rats don't volunteer.

“My name's David Foxe,” he said. “I've been asked, or rather I've been forced, to conduct an experiment. I can promise you it will do no one any harm. I can also promise that no one need take part unless they want to. Everybody in the experiment must be a volunteer.”

Arms rose at the word, like the tentacles of some sea-bed creature wavering for prey above the sandy floor.

“That's no good,” said Foxe, wearily. He was cross with himself for not having guessed that one of the guards would already have been down here, telling them what would be done to those who failed to volunteer. The Prime Minister had probably given the orders even before he'd allowed Captain Angiah to concede the point. Foxe was tired of the sheer crudeness of the machinery of despotism—surely they must know that he'd be aware that if he failed to get the volunteers he wanted there'd be no question of the clause about his going back to house arrest on Hog's Cay becoming operative—he'd simply vanish, or fall into the harbour and drown, or eat something poisonous from Mrs Trotter's recipe book, or … Part of Foxe's anger rose from feeling that he was being treated as almost totally naïve, but more from this being a further interference in the domain of his laboratory.

He waited till the arms had returned to rest. A few of the faces looked puzzled, but one or two were smiling, in a remote sort of way, as if his refusal to accept their offer had been a small victory for them.

“Now listen,” he said. “First I will tell you what I can offer to those who do volunteer. I cannot work with you if you are ill or starved, so I will see that you get proper food. You will not do any work except what is needed for the experiment. You will have no contact with any of the guards. I think the experiment will last about five weeks.

“Now, as for the experiment itself. I can't tell you the details of it, partly because I haven't worked them out yet and partly because if you know what the purpose of the experiment is that will affect your performance. But in general terms it is to study the effect of a particular drug on human behaviour. I myself believe that this drug probably has no effect at all, or is if anything a mild sedative. To prove that this is so, I will inject myself with the same drug. I'm not doing this only for that reason, but because I've been forced to conduct these experiments, and I need to be able to show that I'm not asking you to undergo anything that I'm not prepared to undergo myself. For the same reason I need to be able to show that everyone taking part in the experiment is a genuine volunteer.

“The only other thing I can tell you at the moment is that the experiment will consist of your doing certain tests, which will probably be more like children's games than anything else, and I will measure your performance. Are there any questions?”

There was a brief silence. They stared at him with a strange look which he found hard to read. If they had indeed been children he would have said it was that sense of desolation which comes when an expected treat is cancelled by the mysterious whims of the adult world. A deep voice spoke.

“This what you come to tell us? We play games?”

The words seemed to come from nowhere in particular, like a medium's ventriloquial trickery—a useful knack among prisoners.

“It's not exactly games,” he said. “I haven't worked out the details, because I've never done anything quite like this before. My proper work is with animals. Rats, for instance. I make them do rather simple tricks, such as finding their way through mazes, and I measure how fast they learn to do it. I've got one here, as a matter of fact.” He put his hand in his pocket and held Quentin up by the scruff, legs and tail dangling. Some rats don't mind this treatment, but Quentin started to wriggle so Foxe, unwilling to lose the slight hold he now had on the prisoners' attention, put him on his left sleeve and let him run up to his shoulder. All along the ranked faces before him eyes opened wider, a movement both involuntary and unanimous, like a bed of mussels opening in response to a change of current.

“The rat has a name?” asked the sourceless deep voice.

“Quentin,” said Foxe. “That's what the Q stands for.”

They laughed, loud and all together, with a note of surprise and delight, as if what he'd said had been a brilliant, unpredictable pun. The noise startled Quentin, making him nuzzle into Foxe's ear. Abruptly the noise cut out.

“What he saying?” whispered two or three voices together. Foxe shrugged, wishing he could think how to erase the violet dye and return Quentin to ordinary rathood. He didn't want a lot of magical nonsense messing up his task. Probably it was best to treat it all as a joke, he decided.

“I don't pay much attention to what he says. He's a bit mad, if you want to know.”

They stared, so silent that it was hard to believe they were even breathing—stared not at Foxe but at Quentin on his shoulder, making him feel that they were actually looking past him at some monster of the volcanic pit creeping up behind. Carelessly he plucked the rat from its perch and slid it into his pocket. They breathed. They fidgeted.