Walking Dead (13 page)

“What is it?” asked Foxe, eyeing the greyish granules in her palm.

“Owl-crap.”

“Aha.”

She seemed to take the grunt for qualified approval, and throughout the next course rattled on about her campaign for the President's health. It was like street warfare: in every artery, lurking along the bowel, holed up in pancreas and kidney, were hostile troops that had to be winkled out with high-explosive laxatives and herbal flame-throwers and the hideous hand-to-hand of charm and philtre. Meanwhile the city was under siege; assassins ringed its walls with knives and spells, and other-worldly enemies hovered above it, hoping to snatch its chief treasure, her son's mighty soul. To Foxe the spells she used, the dangers she named, were mostly silly mumbo-jumbo, but slowly a historical logic became clear. Like a child playing hospitals with a doll, she had dosed her son since he was born with any ingredient that amused her. It sounded as if he might have been a comparatively normal baby, and now he was this … this thing.

“What you think, Foxy?” she snapped, catching him by surprise because she didn't seem to have finished her recital.

“Oh … Well, I think perhaps you're overdoing it,” he said. Very little of him wanted to laugh. Her methods were ridiculous, but the horror of the effect kept his tone grave.

“What you mean?” she said sulkily.

“You see, drugs aren't simple things. They have more than one effect on the body, and if you use them together they affect each other's effects. Sometimes you have to use more than one drug, perhaps to suppress a side-effect or something like that, but you don't if you can help it. And on top of that two drugs may have a side-effect which neither of them has alone. A lot of my job is looking for things like that, but even so we sometimes make mistakes. I remember a couple of years ago we had to withdraw a stuff we'd just brought out, a decoagulant for thrombosis cases, when we found that if the patient had been taking a very common tranquilliser—even if he'd stopped taking it several weeks before—he got severe bleeding of the intestine.”

The pout of her mouth lessened, she began to nod, assimilating Foxe's mumbo jumbo to hers. The Prime Minister laughed.

“You'll have a job persuading my mother to leave anything out of her recipes. You're a vicarious hypochondriac, Mother.”

“Nothing to do with you, O,” she said. “The Lord cheat me there, Foxy—give me this clever son with no soul, and that stupid son with a 'normous soul—soul big 'nough for two men.”

“The Lord arranged things very well,” said the Prime Minister, somehow adjusting his tone to share amusement and disbelief with Foxe and acceptance and credulity with his mother.

“That for sure,” she croaked, appeased. “That why this my son get so strong, Foxy. Enemies, they can go for to shoot him, go for to poison him, but they can't lay for his soul, cause of for him an empty man. Right, and you tell me I giving that my other son too many these things?”

“I'd have said so, though it isn't my field, really. Perhaps rather more exercise, to let them work out of his body … I don't think you need cut down on the incantations, because I doubt if they have side-effects in the same kind of way …”

“Right. Right. You're a good boy, Foxy. You help this my son, I look after that my other son.”

She swept her ingredients into her reticule, rose and waddled away down the hall. The servants shut their eyes and bowed as she passed.

“You managed that very well,” said Doctor Trotter. “It is important not to treat my mother as a fool. She is a woman of very great … abilities.”

The last sentence was clearly a euphemism. As a man of education and experience Doctor Trotter could not of course say that his mother had the power, but that was what he meant.

“Yes, sir, I know, but …” Foxe began.

“Now you must tell me how you are getting on with my experiment,” said the Prime Minister.

“I've hardly begun yet, sir,” said Foxe. A dark hand, white-sleeved, emaciated, slid in front of him a plate of ice-cream sculptured to the shape of a turtle. It snagged his attention.

“I'd rather not talk about it till we're alone, sir,” he said.

“We
are
alone. Ah, I see. These people are hardly likely to bear witness against you, Doctor.”

“It isn't that,” said Foxe, with some of the energy and confidence which came from stepping into his own field. “You want this experiment to work—to produce a result which has some meaning. I don't think it will, but I'm going to do my best, so it's not my fault if it doesn't. Now, one thing which will make any results completely useless will be if the subjects know what's expected of them—or even guess. If the slightest rumour got back …”

“They are totally isolated, Doctor.”

“Yes. That's what makes the whole thing even faintly possible. But I'm not taking any risks. I've not read a lot of prison literature, but I do know how people seem to smuggle news in and out of what look like totally closed situations.”

Doctor Trotter's face darkened, perhaps at Foxe's obstinacy, perhaps at the notion of his victims eluding his power in even so slight a fashion. He ate several spoonfuls of ice-cream.

“I have a country to run, Doctor,” he said. “There are many things I can afford to leave to no one else, so I have not much time to spare. One advantage of bringing you here is that it means we can discuss the experiment over dinner, like this. My mother and brother usually leave well before the meal is over. I wish to follow your work very closely.”

(Meal after meal, night after night, in this place, under this pressure—the sirring, the baaing ma'ams, the soapy assents and cringing disagreements—watching the President being fed, adjudicating on the dried entrails of frogs … Foxe could see only one way out, and started to work towards it.)

“It isn't like that, sir. I mean there's often nothing to discuss. I once spent three and a half months working out the details of a job which took eleven days to run.”

“I am not a patient man, Doctor.”

“You're an intelligent one, though. You can see that it's going to be much harder to get valid results from an experiment like this than it would be with rats. Everything about my rats is known and controlled—their heredity and their rearing. Any which show the slightest sign of abnormality are weeded out. You know that rat which you called subversive—the first thing I shall do when I get back to Europe is to see that all his first-step and second-step siblings are removed from the breeding pools. That's the measure of control I expect.”

Doctor Trotter nodded vehemently, several times, as if to show he understood, approved and hoped to emulate.

“Well, sir. This new group of, er …”

“Subjects.”

“OK. Subjects. I know almost nothing about them …”

“I will see that you have their police records.”

“I suppose that will be a bit of help. But for instance I've obviously got no control over their genetic inheritance. They've all been reared differently, fed differently. They'll have widely different metabolisms. I shall have to start with a whole series of tests—psychology, intelligence, physique—to establish even a vague norm. But more important than that, I shall have to get to know them. I shall have to rely on my experience as an experimenter—my nose, you might almost say—to tell me where that norm lies. This is all going to take time.”

“I am not a patient man.”

“I know. The only way I can think of to speed the process up is to go and live with them.”

“Don't try to cheat me, Doctor. The only way you can think of to prove to the world at large that you are not guilty of experiments on unwilling prisoners is to become a prisoner yourself.”

“I hadn't even thought of that,” said Foxe. “I don't think it would help much. But the last experiment I did in Europe involved keeping a batch of monkeys under continual stress, and to all intents and purposes I lived in my lab while it was going on. It's the way I work, in tricky experiments. I'm very grateful for the President's hospitality, sir, and obviously I would be much more comfortable here. But, for instance, how can I know what the guards are up to when I'm not there?”

Foxe found that he was, and had been for some time, facing the Prime Minister's direct stare. It was like a tiger's mask, the deep-folded brow, the hard hypnotic gaze. He was conscious of the warmth and softness of Quentin, asleep in his jacket pocket. Doctor Trotter spoke at last in a tiger's rumbling, jungly purr.

“Very well. I will give the orders. You shall live in the Pit.”

5

N
ext morning Foxe walked alone to the Castle, carrying his own bag. He had a slight hangover—enough to make him realise that he must have been about one-third drunk when he'd made his suicidal suggestion the night before. He stared about him at the glittering sea and the gawky shapes of the harbour, trying to absorb and somehow store away the feel and smell of liberty against the weeks of imprisonment ahead. Not, of course, that he was free here; the cliffs looked mostly unclimbable, and all along the top ran a complex of chain-link fences which marked the edge of the prison area. No doubt escapes from the working gangs were rare.

Quentin's biorhythms were still in a tangle. He had slept most of the night, woken before dawn and was now at his most active, refusing to stay in Foxe's pocket and insisting on riding on his shoulder. As they reached the railway line a group of guards came out of the tunnel, returning to duty no doubt after a night in the town at the top of the cliffs. They were teasing and mocking a large corporal, who returned their jeers with cheerful swagger, but when they saw Foxe they all fell silent and came to a shuffling halt to let him pass. It seemed an appalling omen, this sudden solemnity at the sight of a man walking towards his doom, and Foxe's nape began to prickle with their sensed stares. He could hear them start to move again, following him towards the castle. Their voices murmured at the fringe of earshot in tones of serious discussion. Foxe was almost at the gate before he guessed that it was not the sight of him that had changed their mood, but of Quentin, though the mark on his back was surely invisible from the angle at which they'd seen him.

“Hey, you're famous,” he muttered. “Classic bit of rumour-spreading, uh? Still, you're going to have to go in my pocket now, or they won't let us through the gate.”

He reached up, plucked the rat off his shoulder and held him for a moment in front of his face.

“You might have been a bit more on the spot last night, mate,” he said. “Kept me out of this.”

Quentin paid no attention. He just crouched in Foxe's grip, beady eyes unblinking, nude tail dangling, refusing to be anthropomorphised. This time when Foxe stuffed him down into his side pocket he stayed there. At once the sound of the soldiers' voices changed its tone. One pair of footsteps quickened, and by the time Foxe reached the ominous black gate the large corporal was striding beside him.

“Hi, Doc,” he said, as though they'd known each other for years. “I'll see you through. I'm Louis. I look after those dumb bastards in the Pit.”

Close too he didn't look quite so big, about Foxe's size and build. It was the uniform and the swagger and the attention of his comrades which had given him added appearance of mass. He was a black-brown Negro, big-lipped like the old cartoons of darkies, with bloodshot eyes under almost hairless brows. He had the confidence of animals which exist fully inside their own brute nature.

“Oh, thanks,” said Foxe. “I think I'm expected.”

“Sure,” said Louis, not seeming to notice the silliness of the cliché in this context. He grunted at the sentry, kicked at the wicket till it boomed and stepped at once into the gap when it opened. Foxe and two of the other soldiers followed him across the reeking courtyard to the gate into the cliff and then waited as he had for Captain Angiah while Louis went into the little guard hut. This time, being merely frightened and not wholly dazed by terror, he was able to sort out a little of the routine; the guard in the hut telephoned through to the guards in the Pit to check that all was secure both sides before the doors were opened. Very likely there was some kind of switch inside which also had to be pressed before the motor would turn. In a way it was curiously like some of the gadgets which Foxe had devised in his time to test the ingenuity of rats—only, of course, he had always given the rats an answer …

At the far end of the tunnel, black against the white glare from the Pit, three guards were waiting to go off duty.

“Where you been, man?” said one.

“Up the town,” said Louis. “Got to wait twenty minutes top of the line. That damn engine running slower and slower.”

“And that girl Louis got in the Avenida wanting it more and more,” added one of the relief guards.

“You owing me half an hour each morning, Louis, soon you owing me whole night. I be taking it off your girl, uh?”

They all guffawed, and the men going off duty began to shamble into the tunnel.

“Hey!” called Louis. “Who that fellow down there, that new man? He ain't meant to be in the Pit.”

“They send him in jus' before you coming,” called a voice, already blurred with echoes. “Man to read and write for Doctor Foxe, they saying.”

“That's right,” said Foxe. “I know about him.”

He glanced down into the arena and saw why Louis had picked the newcomer out so quickly. It wasn't just that he was separated from the other prisoners, a thin shape sitting on the sand with his head buried between his up-drawn knees. The man's shirt, though tattered, was still of such harsh unmitigable violet that Foxe recognised him at once for Mr Trotter, the herbalist.

However long he stayed in the Pit Foxe never became quite used to the sense of being watched. It wasn't the guards that bothered him, it was the feeling that he inhabited a globule of relentless light, like a drop of infected water illuminated for inspection through a microscope. Somewhere above, beyond the furry dark, a stupendous eye peered down. The feeling was already strong in him as he walked across the sand that first morning.

“Mr Trotter?”

The thin, scholarly face looked up, haggard with apprehension.

“Holy Bridget! You! You get me in here, uh?”

“I'm afraid so. I'm sorry. I didn't know it would be you. I just need somebody who can read and write to keep records for me while I do an experiment. You won't be hurt—and nor will anyone else. I hope.”

A change came over Mr Trotter's face.

“Science?” he said, breathing the word as if it were somehow holy.

“As far as possible,” said Foxe. “It's not going to be easy, but we've got to do the best we can. I dare say I could exchange you if you don't want to take it on.”

“No. Sure,” said Mr Trotter, scrambling almost eagerly to his feet. “Better than shovelling coal into that bloody engine. Every time she come to the cliff I been all scared she going to take me with her. Right. What we do?”

“We start by taking records of all these people—age, name, and so on. And I've worked out a rough IQ test. There's supposed to be a trestle table and chairs for us, and paper and things. Ah yes, over there …”

Ten minutes later Foxe and Mr Trotter were sitting behind the table and the first of the “subjects” was ready to begin. He was a pale-skinned man, his haggard cheeks fringed by a tight-curling black beard, and with eyes so large and fiery that he looked as if he were in the grip of some drug.

“Please sit down,” said Foxe. “Now, what's your name?”

“Plantain.”

“Uh?”

“Musa Paradisiaca,” said Mr Trotter. “No relation of your European plantain.”

“It is my naming name,” said the man. “On the mountain we are reborn. We take a true name which we tell only to the Secret Ones, and a naming name for men to use. My naming name is Plantain.”

He had a deep, priest-like voice which made Foxe guess that this had been the ventriloquist. A nutter, too. A pal for Quentin. But OK, if you can name experimental rats after people you can name experimental people after plants.

“Age? From your, er, pre-mountain birth, I mean.”

“Twenty-eight years.”

“Trade?”

“Magician.”

“I will put down ‘Social worker,'” whispered Mr Trotter.

“OK,” said the man, indifferent. “Provided Doctor Foxe know the truth.”

Foxe tried to grunt as if he had the slightest idea what was going on. The selection of experimental rats was never like this. As if to counterbalance the man's nonsense he fished Quentin out of his pocket and put him, drowsy now, on the table. The man glanced at him with interest but without fear.

“All right,” said Foxe. “Now, the next thing is an intelligence test; it's very rough, but it's the best I can do in the circumstances. I'm going to ask you six questions, and I want you to answer as quickly as you can, or to tell me if you don't know the answer or can't understand the question. Ready?”

Foxe had no professional experience of IQ tests, and regarded them, even at their best, as outside the boundaries of genuine science. But six years ago he'd lived for one winter with a dark, giggling, motherly girl called Margaret, who'd had a job with an Educational Research unit as a test-tester. There'd been a fuel strike that winter and she and Foxe had spent their spare time in bed, taking turns to extrude a chilling arm above the eiderdown to hold the paper on which she was working at the time and then pick holes in her colleagues' logic. This remembered smattering was enough for the moment; it didn't matter that it was going to be statistically valueless, because its main function was to mislead the prisoners about the actual nature of the experiment. Still, the man who called himself Plantain scored pretty high.

“Thank you,” said Foxe when he'd finished. “Now will you go and sit over there, away from the others? I don't want any communication between those who have done the tests and those who haven't.”

Plantain rose and glanced down at Quentin, who was sleepily gnawing a pencil.

“We will not cheat you,” he said.

Hm. We'll see about that, thought Foxe. That's the whole point.

“Next, please,” he called.

A woman rose and came striding across the sand. She was pale fawn and quite pretty, apart from her emaciation and sadly protruding teeth. Her ragged shirt was open to her navel and she stared blazingly at Foxe as though daring him to glance below her neck-line.

“Please sit down,” he said. “What's your name?”

“Cocoa Bean,” she snapped.

They were in their twenty-third interview—a man who called himself Lobelia—when the darkness above found a voice.

“Dinnertime, Doc. You wanting it now?”

“Three minutes,” said Foxe.

He finished his questions and called again. A basket came dangling down on a rope, and then a plastic dustbin. Mr Trotter sniffed with flared nostrils.

“Hey! That smell like
food
!”
said Mr Trotter. “They been feeding us on shit outside!”

He sprang to his feet and rushed towards the bin, a one-man stampede. No one else moved.

“And there's plates too!” he cried.

Foxe reached him before he could actually plunge into what looked like a goat-meat stew.

“Hold on,” he said. “You and I come last, I'm afraid. But I'll see you get your share.”

“Holy Bridget! That's
oranges
!”

“Right,” said Foxe, feeling absurdly smug and competent at having thus far managed to keep his side of his bargain with the prisoners. “Now, I want to see that they all get equal rations. What we'll do is this …”

It took less time than he expected, because the prisoners accepted the discipline of exact rations with complete understanding. The stew was already tepid, and accompanied by greasy rice, but nobody began to eat until they were back in their separate groups. They chanted what sounded like a grace—solo and response, and ate in silence. Foxe and Mr Trotter returned to their table with their own share.

“Pardon me, sir,” said Mr Trotter. “I ain't exactly superstitious, but you mind putting that rat away while I eating?”

“No, of course,” said Foxe. “Come here, mate. Now, you go to sleep for a bit. Look here's a bit of orange peel to take to bed with you.”

He slid Quentin away and settled to his meal, a soapy mess of meat-shreds and gluey blobs of starch, almost saltless. By all rights the contrast with last night's dinner should have made it inedible, but Foxe felt strangely hungry and ate with appetite. He must have burned a lot of fuel in the last mad days, but now he was settling to something like his proper work. He reached for the morning's records and began to browse down the columns of figures, all in Mr Trotter's looping, slanted Victorian copperplate.

“It reads like a cast-list for
Watership Down
,”
he said.

“Uh?”

“Kid's book about rabbits, all named after plants. It's been a sort of cult success, not only with kids. My last girl thought it was the greatest thing since Shakespeare.”

It was odd to be suddenly freed to talk about Lisa-Anna in this place.

“I could put you in the Latin names,” said Mr Trotter.

“That way we can talk about them, you and me, and they ain't knowing who we're naming.”

“I don't know. They're a very bright bunch—that or I got my IQ test wrong. Who are they, do you know?”

“You didn't know?” whispered Mr Trotter. “Holy Bridget! They's all that's left of the Khandhars. You 'member we been talking 'bout that, back in my hotel. Doctor O sent the Old Woman up the Mountain, so all the people been too scared to help the Khandhars, an' the soldiers ain't scared no more. There's two sorts of Khandhar—all one movement, but some of them taking more interest in the political side. Doctor O shot all those sort when he caught them, and now there's only a few left in New York and places. These fellows in here are the religious sort. I don't know why he don't shoot them too—maybe he likes to see he's got them trapped and wriggling.”

“I see,” said Foxe. “I wonder how Plantain knew my name—I'd been meaning to keep that quiet. Perhaps the guards told them when they were ordering them to volunteer.”

“Khandhars know a lot of things.”

“I suppose so. Never mind. The real thing is that a bunch of highly motivated revolutionaries aren't much of a cross-section. They're probably all outside the curve of normality. Though I suppose you could say that's true of most people who find themselves in jail.”