Authors: Alistair MacLean
The commandant led the way across the hard-packed snow of the courtyard, through the guarded entrance to a massively-walled, window-barred block of buildings and along a narrow, dim-lit corridor. Half-way along, at the head of ,a flight of stone steps leading down into the gloom below, he paused at a door, gestured to one of the guards and turned to the two prisoners.
'A last thought, gentlemen, a last sight to take with you down into the dungeons below, while you spend your last few hours on earth as the men you have always known yourselves to be.' The key clicked in the lock, and the commandant pushed it open with his foot. 'After you, gentlemen.'
Hobbled by the shackles, Reynolds and Jansci stumbled into the room, saving themselves from falling by catching at the foot-rail of an old-fashioned iron bedstead. A man was lying on the bed, dozing, and Reynolds saw, almost with no sensation of surprise -- he had been expecting it from the moment the commandant had stopped outside the door -- that it was Dr. Jennings. Haggard and wasted and years older than when Reynolds had seen him three days previously, he had been dozing on a dirty straw mattress: but he was almost instantly awake, and Reynolds could not resist a slow stirring of satisfaction when he saw that, whatever else the old man had lost, it certainly wasn't his intransigence: the fire was back in the faded eyes even as he struggled upright.
'Well, what the devil does this latest intrusion mean?' He spoke English, the only language he knew, but Reynolds could see that the commandant understood. 'Haven't you damned ruffians pushed me about enough for a week-end without...' He broke off when he recognised Reynolds for the first time and stared at him. 'So the fiends got you, too?'
'Inevitably,' the commandant said in precise English. He turned to Reynolds. 'You came all the way from England to see the professor. You have seen him. Now you can say goodbye. He leaves this afternoon -- -in three hours' time, to be precise, for Russia.' He turned to Jennings. 'Road conditions are extremely bad -- we have arranged for a special coach to be attached to the Pecs train. You will find it comfortable enough.'
'Pecs?' Jennings glared at him. 'Where the devil is Pecs?'
'One hundred kilometres south of here, my dear Jennings. The Budapest airport is temporarily closed by snow and ice, but the latest word is that Pecs Airport is still open. A special plane for yourself and a -- ah -- a few other special cases is being diverted there.'
Jennings ignored him, turned and stared at Reynolds.
'I understand that my son Brian has arrived in England?' Reynolds nodded in silence.
'And I'm still here, eh? You've done splendidly, young man, just splendidly. What the devil is going to happen now God only knows.'
'I can't tell you how sorry I am, sir.' Reynolds hesitated, then made up his mind. 'There's one thing you should know. I have no authority for telling you this, but for this once only to hell with authority. Your wife -- your wife's operation was one hundred per cent successful and her recovery is already almost complete.'
'What! What's that you're saying?' Jennings had Reynolds by the lapels, and though forty pounds lighter than the younger man was actually shaking him. 'You're lying, I know you're lying! The surgeon said..."
'The surgeon said what we told him to say,' Reynolds interrupted flatly. 'I know it was unforgivable, but it was essential to bring you home and every possible lever was to be brought to bear. But it doesn't matter a damn any more, so you might as well know.'
'My God, my God!' The reaction Reynolds had expected, especially from a man of the professor's reputation -- that of an almost berserker anger over having been duped so long and so cruelly -- completely failed to materialise. Instead, he collapsed on his bed as if the weight of his body had grown too much for his old legs to bear, and blinked happily through his tears. 'This is wonderful, I can't tell you how wonderful.... And only a few hours ago, I knew I could never be happy again!'
'Most interesting, all most interesting,' the commandant murmured. 'And to think that the west has the effrontery to accuse us of inhumanity.'
'True, true,' Jansci murmured. 'But at least the west doesn't pump its victims full of Actedron and Mescaline.'
'What? What's that?' Jennings looked up. 'Who's been pumped full of -- ?'
'We have,' Jansci interrupted mildly. 'We're to be given a fair trial and then shot in the morning, but first comes the modern equivalent of being broken on the wheel.'
Jennings stared at Jansci and Reynolds, the incredulity on his face slowly changing to horror. He rose and looked at the commandant.
'Is this true? What this man says, I mean?'
The commandant shrugged. 'He exaggerates, of course, but -- '
'So it is true.' Jennings' voice was quiet. 'Mr. Reynolds, it is as well you told me of my wife: the use of that lever would now be quite superfluous. But it's too late now, I can see that, just as I begin to see many other things -- and begin to know the things I shall never see again.' 'Your wife.' Jansci's words were statement, not question. 'My wife,' Jennings nodded. 'And my boy.' 'You shall see them again,' Jansci said quietly. Such was the quiet certainty, the unshakable conviction in his tone, that the others stared at him, half-convinced that he had some knowledge that was denied them, half-convinced that he was mad. 'I promise you, Dr. Jennings.'
The old man stared at him, then the hope slowly faded from his eyes.
'You are kind, my friend. Religious faith is the prop -- ' 'In this world,' Jansci interrupted. 'And soon.' 'Take him away,' the commandant ordered curtly. "The man goes mad already.'
Michael Reynolds was going insane, slowly but inevitably insane, and the most terrible part of it was that he knew he was going insane. But since the last forced injection shortly after they had been strapped in their chairs in that underground cellar, there had been nothing he could do about the relentless onset of this madness, and the more he fought against it, the more resolutely he struggled to ignore the symptoms, the pains, the agonising stresses that were being set up in mind and body, then the more acutely he became aware of the symptoms, the deeper into his mind dug these fiendish claws, chemical claws, claws that were tearing his mind apart.
He was secured to his high-backed chair hand and foot, by a thigh belt and by a waist-belt and he would have given all he ever had or would have for the blessed release of throwing off these bonds, of flinging himself to the floor, or against a wall, or of contorting, convulsing his body in every fashion conceivable, of flexing and stretching, flexing and stretching every muscle he had, anything in a desperate attempt to ease that intolerable itch and frightening tension set up by ten thousand jumping, jangling nerve-ends all over his body. It was the old Chinese torture of tickling the soles of the feet magnified a hundredfold, only here there were no feathers, only the countless insidious probing needles of Actedron jabbing every screaming nerve-end into a frantic frenzy, an undreamed of pitch of frenetic excitability.
Waves of nausea swept over him, his inside felt as if a wasp's nest had been broken there and a thousand buzzing wings were beating against the walls of his stomach, he was having difficulty with his breathing and, more and more frequently now, his throat would constrict in a terrifying fashion, he could feel himself choke for want of air while waves of panic surged through him, then at the last instant release would come and the air surge gaspingly into his starving lungs. But his head, his mind -- that was the worst of all. The inside of his head seemed dark and confused, the edges of his mind ragged and woolly and increasingly losing contact with reality, for all his conscious, desperate attempts to cling on to what shreds of reason the Actedron and Mescaline had left him. The back of his head felt as if it were being crushed between a vice, and his eyes ached abominably. He could hear voices now, voices calling from afar, and as the last vestiges of his reason slipped away from his powerless grasp and down into the darkness he knew, even as his power of knowing left him, that the dark shroud of madness had completely enveloped him in its thick and choking folds.
But still the voices came -- even down in the black depths, still the voices came. Not voices, something seemed to tell him, not voices but just a voice, and it wasn't speaking to him or whispering insanely in the dark corners of his mind as all the other voices had been, it was shouting at him, calling him with a strength that penetrated even through the folds of madness, with a desperate, compelling urgency that no man with life at all left in him could possibly ignore. Again and again it came, endlessly insistent, seeming to grow louder and louder with every moment that passed, until at last something reached deep down into Reynolds' darkness, lifted a tiny corner of the shroud and let him recognise the voice for a passing moment of time. It was a voice he knew well, but a voice he had never heard like this before: it was, he just dimly managed to realise, Jansci's voice, and Jansci was shouting at him, over and over again. 'Keep your head up! For God's sake, keep your head up! Keep it up, keep it up!' over and over again like some insane litany.
Slowly, ponderously, inch by agonising inch as if he were lifting some tremendous weight, Reynolds lifted his head off his chest, his eyes still clamped shut, until he felt the back of his head press against the high chair-back. For a long moment he stayed in that position, fighting for breath like a long distance runner at the end of a gruelling race, then his head started to droop again.
'Keep it up! I told you to keep it up!' Jansci's voice was vibrant with command, and Reynolds was suddenly aware, clearly and unmistakably aware, that Jansci was projecting towards himself, making a part of himself, some of that fantastic will-power that had taken him from the Kolyma Mountains and brought him back alive across the uncharted, sub-zero wastes of the Siberian deserts. 'Keep it up, I tell you! That's better, that's better! Now, your eyes -- open your eyes and look at me!'
Reynolds opened his eyes and looked at him. It was as if someone had covered his eyes with thick sheaths of lead, the effort was so great, but open them he finally did and peered with unfocused gaze across the gloom of the cellar. At first he could see nothing, he thought his eyes were gone, there was only a misty vapour swimming across his eyes, and then suddenly he knew it was a misty vapour, and he remembered that the stone floor was covered in six inches of water and the entire cellar festooned with steam pipes: the steaming, humid heat, worse by far than any Turkish bath he had ever known, was part of the treatment.
And now he could see Jansci: he could see him as if he were seeing through a misted, frosted glass, but he could see him, perhaps eight feet away, in a chair the duplicate of his own. He could see the head continually shaking from side to side, the jaws working constantly, the hands at the end of the pinioned arms opening and closing convulsively as Jansci sought to release some of the accumulated tension, the exquisitely agonising titillation of his over-stimulated nervous system.
'Don't let your head go again, Michael,' he said urgently. Even in his distress, the use of his Christian name struck Reynolds, the first time Jansci had ever used it, pronouncing it exactly as his daughter had done. 'And for heaven's sake keep your eyes open. Don't let yourself go, whatever you do, don't let yourself go! There's a peak, a crisis of some kind to the effects of these damned chemicals, and if you get over that -- don't let go!' he shouted suddenly. Again Reynolds opened his eyes: this time the effort was fractionally less.
'That's it, that's it!' Jansci's voice came more clearly now. 'I felt just the same a moment ago, but if you let go, yield to the effects, there's no recovery. Just hang on, boy, just hang on. I can feel it going already.'
And Reynolds, also, could feel the grip of the chemicals easing. He had still the same mad urge to tear loose, to convulse every muscle in his body, but his head was clearing, and the ache behind his eyes beginning to dwindle. Jansci was talking to him all the while, encouraging him, distracting him, and gradually all his limbs and body began to quieten, he grew cold even in the fierce tropical heat of the cellar and bouts of uncontrollable shivering shook him from head to foot. Then the shivering faded and died away, and he began to sweat and grow faint as the humidity and the heat pouring from the steam pipes increased with every moment that passed. He was again on the threshold of collapse -- a clear-headed, sane collapse this time -- when the door opened and gum-booted warders came splashing through the water. Within seconds the warders had them free and were urging them through the open door into the clear, icy air and Reynolds, for the first time in his life, knew exactly what the taste of water must seem like to a man who had been dying of thirst in the desert.
Ahead of him he could see Jansci shrugging off the supporting hands of the warders on either side of him, and Reynolds, though he felt like a man after a long and wasting bout of fever, did the same. He staggered, all but fell when the support of the arms was withdrawn, recovered and steeled himself to follow Jansci out into the snow and bitter cold of the courtyard with his body erect and his head held high.
The commandant was waiting for them, and his eyes narrowed in swift disbelief as he saw them come out. For a few moments he was at a loss, and the words so ready on his lips remained unsaid. But he recovered quickly, and the professorial mask slipped effortlessly into place.
'Candidly, gentlemen, had one of my medical colleagues reported this to me, I should have called him a liar. I would not, I could not have believed it. As a matter of clinical interest, how do you feel?'
'Cold. And my feet are freezing -- maybe you hadn't noticed it, but our feet are soaking wet -- we've been sitting with them in water for the past two hours.' Reynolds leaned negligently against a wall as he spoke, not because his attitude reflected his feelings, but because without the wall's support he would have collapsed on to the snow. But not even the wall lent him the support and encouragement that the approving gleam in Jansci's eye did.
'All in good time. Periodic alternations of temperature is part of the -- ah -- treatment. I congratulate you, gentlemen. This promises to be a case of unusual interest.' He turned to one of the guards. 'A clock in their cellar, and where they can both see it. The next injection of Actedron will be -- let me see, it's now midday -- will be at 2 pjn. precisely. We must not keep them in undue suspense.'