fic: The Indirect Life (2/?)
The worst thing about the cell wasn’t how small it was, or how cold, damp, smelly, or dark. It wasn’t the ancient filth of the floor or the rough metal shelf that served as a bed. It wasn’t even the rats, and admittedly, the rats were pretty awful.
No, he decided, the worst thing about the cell - the absolute, certain, very worst thing - was the noise.
From the moment he’d become aware of being in the cell, he’d been plagued by this din, a constant not-quite-white noise comprised of sentence fragments, nearly asked questions, incomplete answers. Voices jumped from topic to topic willy-nilly; statements were interrupted by pointless laughter. Conversations were derailed by non-sequiturs which then formed the basis for new conversations which were in turn derailed by other non-sequiturs.
A never-ending stream of vocalization seemed to substitute for running water here - dripping, trickling, saturating, and overflowing; it surged on and on until he feared he’d drown. Expressions of pain, fact, fear and despair, of frustration intermingled; sometimes they were punctuated by begging or sobbing or a fearful cackling that spoke not of joy, but of desperation, even madness.
He tried to ignore it, he tried to make fun of it, and he even tried to drown it out with his own voice. Nothing seemed to make a dent in the tidal waves of chaotic noise. Sometimes it was so unbearable that he found himself screaming for respite: “Everybody shut up! I can’t hear myself think!”
And as this announcement bounced desultorily off the dungeon walls, there was sudden silence, into which muted ambient sound gradually filtered - the dripping of a leak somewhere in the corridor; the distant laughter of two guards somewhere far away. The longed-for but eerie quiet bred a thought with an uncomfortable ring of truth: I *am* hearing myself think.
In those moments, the stillness was unquestionably the worst thing about the cell. Fortunately, such moments never lasted long and were quickly forgotten… mostly.
*********
Eventually, the jumble of misfired thoughts in his head seemed to find some semblance of order, and a degree of linear thought was restored. He was sure “restored” was the right expression; he had the sense that once, he hadn't been too shabby in the thinking department. It might have been a gradual process, or it might have happened all at once. He had no ability to track the passage of time, nor could his perceptions be fully trusted.
Now he could take better stock of his surroundings and try to analyze the situation, which gave him a feeling of purpose. He had no idea why he was in a dungeon, where the dungeon was located, or who was keeping him here. However, he did eventually deduce that he was the only prisoner in this particular wing. Occasionally, distant screams and harsh responses would waft to his ears along the drafty corridor, but they were never close enough for him to make out actual words. And the guards who brought him what he called, for the sake of reference, “food” each day refused to answer his questions with anything but jeers or slaps, but he never heard them jeering or slapping anyone else as they passed the other cells near his.
So it was a momentous event when the men in long coats finally marched into sight and deposited a man into the cell directly across from his. He crept close to the bars and watched intently as they shoved the newcomer inside, tripping him when he failed to stumble as they apparently intended, and laughing when he hit the floor. He remained on the floor - wisely, he thought - as the barred door was lowered, only deigning to stand erect when the guards were on their way back down the corridor.
The stranger was shaken, but his poise was impressive. It was clear from his fine clothing and well-cut graying hair that he was used to more pleasant surroundings and to being treated with respect and consideration, yet he remained remarkably calm and dignified as he slowly examined his surroundings with calculating blue eyes. Only his breathing, which was a bit more rapid than normal, gave away the fear he was feeling.
As a veteran resident, it was probably his duty to reassure the new arrival. “Don’t worry,” he said, too loudly. The man jumped in alarm, and he quickly lowered the volume of his voice. “Sorry. I just meant to say, it’s not as bad as it looks. They mostly leave you alone, as long as you don’t ask them too many questions.” He laughed, a bit too loudly again, and added, “You should especially avoid asking the tall one what happened to his other eye. He’s just a little bit sensitive, it seems.” He smiled and touched the bruise he still bore on one cheek. Yep, still sore.
He stopped talking when he realized the other man was pressed against the bars, staring at him with an expression of shock. He took a step back and quickly glanced down at himself. All his clothes were on - correctly - with no indiscretions. He rubbed a hand along his face to check for unsightly food particles. He couldn’t find an obvious reason for the guy to look so appalled by him, so he glanced behind him. Well, one of the rats was making his rounds looking for discarded food again. Maybe he’d never seen one before.
“Ambrose?” the man asked in a hushed tone.
He frowned. Less than a minute here, and the guy was already naming the rats?
“My god, Ambrose!”
He smiled uncertainly. “Well, I’m not familiar with that particular deity, but I believe wholeheartedly in religious tolerance, so feel free to-hey, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”
The newcomer’s shoulders had drooped and his face was ashen. He stumbled back and shuffled toward the bench, sitting on it heavily. “We thought you were dead.”
Um. Okay. “That’s kind of an odd thing to assume about… someone you’ve never met.”
“You don’t remember anything? I’m not the least bit familiar?”
“Well, no offense, mister, but if I can’t remember a single thing about me, there’s not much hope that I’ll remember you, now is there?”
The man hung his head. “No, there’s no hope. No hope at all.” His voice was thick. He seemed close to tears.
“I’m sorry!” he sputtered, since he’d obviously somehow caused the man distress, although he couldn’t remember how. If there was anything worse than being unable to remember who he was, it was not being able to recall how he’d hurt someone. He’d spent lots of time worrying about what sort of misdeeds he’d committed in his forgotten past.
“At first, we’d held out hope that you’d find a way to escape,” the man was saying, almost as though talking to himself. “Trask and some of the others thought it was foolish, wishful thinking, but the rest of us had faith in that brain of yours.”
Here the stranger glanced up, and he could tell that he was looking at the zipper. Automatically, his hand stole up, checking that it hadn’t worked itself open.
“But when weeks had passed with no sign of you and no word of your fate, we finally accepted that Azkadellia had executed you. Now, it seems… we were wrong.” His tone was despairing, as though being wrong about a friend’s death were the saddest thing imaginable.
“I’m sorry, but… who are you talking to?” Not the most sensitive response, he supposed, but it needed to be asked. He still saw no one else around but the rat.
Impatient, the man snapped, “Who? Is there anyone else here? I’m talking to you, Ambrose!”
“Me, Ambrose? Me Ambrose? Wait - are you saying you know me? I have a name? And you know it?”
“Yes,” the man said slowly and distinctly, “I know you, and your name is Ambrose. You’re the… you were the Queen’s top advisor.”
“What, me? Really? Wow! That’s… that’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
The man smiled slightly, amused in spite of himself. “It certainly was.”
“Okay, so I was the Queen’s top advisor. Who were you? Did I know you well?”
“I’m Charles Farsing, the Queen’s Minister of the Interior. You and I were colleagues.”
“Colleagues, but not friends?”
“I considered you a friend.”
“Did I consider you a friend?”
Charles laughed. The newly named Ambrose found it unexpectedly delightful to hear. “As far as I know, you did. We played chess once a week, a standing arrangement for almost two annuals.”
Ambrose wrinkled his forehead in thought. “Well, I doubt I would have done that if I didn’t enjoy your company. I was probably smart enough to come up with an excuse if I’d wanted to.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Charles said with a smile. In the however long he’d been here, Ambrose had never seen a sincere smile. It flooded his heart with a warmth that both soothed and stung.
“Tell me more!” he said excitedly. “Who else did I know? What was I like?”
“Well, hmm.” Charles leaned back against the wall and thought. “You were, of course, very well-known at court. You knew all the important officials, everyone else in the Queen’s Cabinet.”
“The Queen! I must have known her as well.”
“It would have been difficult to advise her otherwise.”
Ambrose laughed. “Very true. So, how did she come to choose me as her… What did you say my name is?”
“Ambrose.”
“Ambrose. Right. So how did she come to choose me to advise her?”
“As I understand it, you were spotted while you were still at university. You had made quite a name for yourself as a scientific researcher and engineer. The Queen was advised to offer you a position in the Division of Science.”
“Science! I knew I was a scientist of some sort. I could just tell. What else?”
“Well, you continued to draw attention with a series of new technologies. The Queen was so impressed that she elevated you to positions of greater responsibility several times. Unfortunately, this ruffled some feathers amongst some of the more senior scientists.”
“Really? Why?”
“They didn’t like reporting to a much younger man.”
“What much younger man?”
Charles sighed. “That would be you, Ambrose.”
“Oh. I’m young?”
“Well, you were at the time, at least.”
“Wow. Yeah, I guess that would tend to upset older people. What happened then?”
“Well, a lucky thing came up: a cave-in at the largest selsium mine in the O.Z.”
Ambrose stared, not sure he understood properly. “That’s a lucky thing?”
“It was lucky for you, as it turned out. It was a huge crisis - forty-seven men were trapped inside a mountain. Prevailing wisdom dictated a traditional approach - drill, dig, assess, repeat. Very slow, and only successful in saving lives about forty percent of the time.
“You proposed a radical new approach, using experimental technology that melted rock and burned it away. There was great resistance to the idea by those in the Division of Science who didn’t support you, but the Queen approved the use of the technique.”
“She did?” He didn’t have a single memory of the Queen, but it was absurdly pleasing to learn that she’d had more faith in his judgment than in his detractors’.
“Your idea worked. All the miners who’d survived the cave-in were rescued. The Queen realized that you possessed not just a fine technical and scientific mind but a gift for analysis and imagination, and that was when she realized that you would be even more valuable to the kingdom as one of her personal advisors.”
Ambrose could only gape, mesmerized by the story of a life he’d lived but would never remember. It was hard to know whether to revel in the knowledge of his forgotten triumphs, or to feel cheated by the theft if his awareness of them. He tried to make up for it all by repeating Charles’s words to himself several times, striving to memorize them, if such a thing was possible for him.
“You really have no memory of any of it? Nothing at all?”
He shook his head. “I wish I did. It all sounds so wonderful.”
Charles stood suddenly and came to the bars of his cell, peering at Ambrose intently. “Try very hard to remember. Can you recall anything at all about, say, the last time you and I saw each other?”
Ambrose was puzzled. “About… No, did you forget? I can’t remember anything about, well… anything.”
“Yes, but have you ever had anyone around who did remember to prompt you with details?”
“No, I haven’t!” Ambrose jumped up excitedly. “What a great idea! Prompt away, Charles. Go on, try it!”
“All right, just keep your voice down.” Charles glanced around, which Ambrose thought was a little silly - it’s not like the rats, or even the guards, were likely to be interested in the story of two friends’ last mutually cognizant moments together. “Close your eyes. Clear your mind and picture yourself in a room.”
“A big room?”
“No, not big.”
“A small one, then.”
“Call it medium-sized. A dark, medium-sized room.”
“Is it nighttime?”
“No, mid-afternoon.”
“Then why is it dark?”
“The shades are drawn.”
“Why are the-”
“Ambrose, please!” Charles’s quiet voice became sharp.
“Right. Sorry.”
Ambrose pictured being in a murky room with Charles. He imagined the other man’s features smoothed by the dimness, the gray of his hair darkened in a flattering trick of too little light. They were talking not in whispers but in muted voices, as though trying not to wake someone sleeping in a nearby room. Strangely, he imagined more than two voices. Several more, in fact. “Are we alone in the room?” he asked without opening his eyes.
Charles hesitated before answering. “No,” he finally said.
Ambrose squinted behind his closed eyelids. No faces, but he saw other people in brocaded coats like the ones he and Charles wore. “Is it a meeting of the Queen’s cabinet?”
“Not exactly. Why do you ask? Do you remember something?”
He wondered distantly why Charles sounded anxious rather than excited at the prospect, but was too busy trying to decide if he was remembering, or merely fabricating a scene based on Charles’s suggestion. He tried to relax and let the scene take him wherever it went.
There was a solemnity to the gathering. He couldn’t really make out what was being said, but the look on Charles’s face was grave, and there was a feeling of urgency in the room. Of course, maybe that was just because he wanted so badly to believe this was a real memory, however murky.
“Well?” the here-and-now Charles was asking. “What do you see? Can you remember anything?”
Ambrose was getting irritated. How was he to know if he was remembering a real event? Who was to say that the scene in his head wasn’t a product of an intense desire to remember coupled with a healthy dollop of extreme suggestibility? Concentrating harder, he tried to see more of the darkened room, to make out faces. Maintaining the scene was a struggle; it kept losing focus, each element skidding away as attention was applied to it. It was like grabbing a bar of soap in a bathtub.
He couldn’t tell how many people were present, but he sensed there were eight or ten altogether. He was addressing them, explaining something, as they all looked at a diagram on a large piece of paper spread over a desktop, which he illuminated with a small light. He thought there was mention of the Queen. Perhaps it was some kind of informal cabinet meeting.
“Was the Queen at this meeting?” he asked hopefully.
“No.”
How disappointing. He would really have liked to see her, even if it was only his imagined version of her. Had he fallen so far that he was no longer worthy of even a remembered glimpse of the Queen who had relied upon his judgment?
This was no longer exciting or fun. Now that he knew a little about his former life, he also knew exactly what sort of things he had lost, and that made the lack of memories even more punishing. If he had learned that his life was insignificant, the loss of all memory of it would perhaps be easier to bear. Now knowing that he had made real contributions to the lives of others and had helped shape the Queen’s decisions for the kingdom just further fueled his desire - no, his need - to remember it. If he couldn’t remember, it was as though it had never happened, and he really needed to know for a fact that he had actually happened.
Opening his eyes, Ambrose turned from the bars and stomped away. He couldn’t make much of an exit, given the confines of the cell, but he did what he could.
“What’s wrong? Did you remember something?”
“No, but thanks so much for all the detailed prompting.”
“I set the scene. I didn’t think I should say too much.”
“Oh, well, that was nicely handled, then.”
“There’s no reason to be angry with me because you can’t remember anything, Ambrose. I’m not the one who did this to you.”
Now that brought up an interesting question. “Did what to me? Why can’t I remember anything?”
Charles frowned in surprise. “You… don’t know?”
“What? Don’t know what?”
For a moment, Charles seemed at a loss. “It’s… Oh, I can’t believe they didn’t tell you already.”
“Maybe they did! How would I know for sure? Maybe that’s just one more thing I’ve forgotten. Why don’t you tell me again, all right? Then we’ll both be sure I know about it.”
“Very well. Azkadellia’s people performed what’s known as a criminal extraction upon you. A significant portion of your brain was removed from your skull, taking with it much of your identity, your memories, and your knowledge.”
Ambrose heard the words in the way that one feels a light breeze blowing the tails of one’s coat. Nothing of significance stirred. It didn’t sound real. “I don’t understand. I don’t know any Azkadellia. Why would someone do that?”
“You do know her. Did, anyway. And apparently, she did it because you wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know.”
“What?”
“I believe it was something to do with one of your inventions. I don’t know for sure, I wasn’t there.”
“Then how do you know exactly what she did to me? The brain thing, I mean.”
“Because of the zipper! It’s not as though I wouldn’t know what that means.”
The zipper. Ambrose reached up to touch it gingerly. He’d done this over and over, and never questioned why it was there. Or had he? He couldn’t remember.
“You… you’ve seen people with zippers like this before?”
Charles threw up his hands, strangely exasperated. “Of course! We all have. It’s what’s done to those who commit particularly vile crimes who resist rehabilitation by other methods. Hence the term ‘criminal extraction.’”
Ambrose cocked his head and thought this over. He wanted to make sure he understood it all properly. “You mean this is a routine punishment?”
“I wouldn’t call it routine. It’s reserved for criminals who defy rehabilitation.”
“So the answer is to rip out their brains and turn them into… into…” Was he unable remember the right word, or could he simply not bear to apply it to himself? “That’s utterly barbaric!”
“I’m so sorry, Ambrose. It should never have happened to you.”
“It shouldn’t happen to anyone! What sort of enlightened society would condone such a monstrous practice?”
Charles bristled. “A society that rejects the notion of capital punishment while recognizing an obligation to protect the public. A society that seeks to ensure public safety without resorting to putting the worst offenders to death. The sentence is neither celebrated nor common.”
Something tickled his mind. “I think someone told me that this happens pretty frequently.” He tried to remember where he’d heard that, frowning with the effort of wading through the noise that was kicking up again inside his head. Even amidst the din of his whirlwind of almost-thoughts, the half-remembered assertion about the frequency of “zipperheads” rang with authenticity. Where had he gotten it?
“It’s not as though it’s done for petty thievery or traffic violations!” Charles said hotly. “Only the most reprehensible, incorrigible criminals receive such a punishment!”
“Yeah?” Ambrose struggled to stay focused on the conversation, which he felt was important even as he was losing the grasp of why it was. “What kind of criminal was I, Charles? What made me...?” The noise was shockingly bad now. What were the words Charles had used? “What made me ‘reprehensible and incorrigible’?” He was aware of panting and grunting as the chaos tried to overwhelm his train of thought. “Was it my ‘gift for analysis and imagination?’ Or… or maybe m-my devotion to the… the Queen?”
And then it was just too much. The clamor in his mind was like standing in the atrium of the Great Hall in Central City while a two hundred-piece brass band played at top volume. He clutched his disfigured skull in anguish and was dimly aware of bawling, “By the suns, shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Ambrose fell to his knees and tried to concentrate on just breathing - in and out; it was very predictable - and gradually noticed that the racket was receding. As the noise faded like departing fog, he could hear Charles saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wish it… Why couldn’t they have just… I’m sorry, Ambrose. I’m so, so sorry.”
For what? Ambrose wondered. What’s he apologizing for? He had a sense that they’d been arguing, but he wasn’t quite sure what about. Releasing his head from the death-grip of his hands, Ambrose looked through the bars at his fellow prisoner.
The other man - what was he called? Oh yes, Charles - was slumped on his bench. Amazing what a difference posture could make in how one was perceived, Ambrose thought. When Charles sat or stood straight, you almost dared not question or disagree with him; he had such gravity, such dignity. Hunched over, he looked just like everyone else. When he spoke now, it was in the hoarse, whispery voice of a tired old man.
“It was never meant to be used this way, Ambrose. No one intended it to come to this.”
“What?” Ambrose was surprised to find he was a little hoarse, too. His throat had a raw feel to it. Had he been screaming? “What wasn’t meant to be used what way?”
Charles sighed heavily, closing his eyes as his head lolled back to rest against the wall. “Criminal extraction. It was intended only to protect society from individuals who could not follow its rules, not to rape brilliant, loyal minds to obtain information.”
The whole conversation came back to him suddenly, or enough of it that Ambrose felt the heat of remembered anger. With a little stoking, he could be angry again, but it was really too much work. “Oh. Right.”
He’d meant only to indicate that he now remembered what they’d been talking about, but Charles apparently thought he was being sarcastic. “The penalty was meant for the greater good! I’ll grant there’s a certain brutality to it, but it was never, ever meant to exploit or to torment!” Charles rubbed his face tiredly. “Anything can be perverted by evil intent.”
Ambrose sat down on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees. He felt exhausted… or perhaps he was just empathizing with Charles’s obvious fatigue? “I suppose so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ambrose blinked. Was the question rhetorical, or was Charles seriously demanding a definition of “I suppose so”? Feeling like a man with ten legs walking through a minefield, he chose not to answer.
“You’re suggesting that there was already evil intent? That only an evil system would practice something like partial brain extraction to keep criminals in line, is that it?”
What under the suns was the right answer? No would likely be rejected as a lie, and yes would simply provoke more defensiveness. “Maybe?”
Seemingly reinvigorated, Charles startled him by slamming a palm against the metal bench and launching himself to his feet, beginning to pace back and forth. “Ours is not an evil society, Ambrose! The Outer Zone has always been renowned for its commitment to fairness and public welfare.”
“Okay.”
“We are not a cruel people, surgically altering people’s brains just to penalize them. We did it because they were a danger to others and could not be persuaded to change, for their own good or the good of the O.Z.”
“All right.”
“There’s nothing evil about keeping the kingdom safe!”
“No, there isn’t.”
“I didn’t like that it was necessary, you know. I didn’t enjoy any reminder that there were people who just couldn’t be set on the path to good citizenship any other way. It was never pleasant when I happened to see one of those poor devils wandering Central City, post-extraction. I often gave them a few notes to help them find their way to food and shelter.”
“That was good of you,” Ambrose said, meaning it.
“Oh, you’re thinking I could have done more! That I was making a token gesture to ease my conscience.”
“No, I-”
“Sometimes things are necessary, Ambrose, unpleasant things that we’d prefer didn’t exist. This is one of those things.”
“Okay.”
“But the circumstances,” Charles said, suddenly seeming desperate, clinging to one of the horizontal bars, “the circumstances are what make the difference. Ambrose, when I saw what they had done to you, I was… I was horrified. Horrified! There is no way this should ever, ever have happened to a man like you.”
Ambrose considered it. Something was niggling. “That’s not exactly true,” he said.
Charles’s face became stone. “What? That it shouldn’t have happened? Or do you think I wasn’t horrified?”
“Yes! I mean, no! I mean…” How to convey what he really meant?
“Well, I was! I was devastated to learn what had happened to you.”
“No, I believe that,” Ambrose said earnestly. “It’s just that… well, you didn’t look… horrified, exactly.”
“What?”
“Shocked, yes, and upset and appalled and like that. You were horrified that it was me that it happened to.”
Charles was silent for a good many seconds. “But not horrified on general principle. Is that what you’re getting at? You understand that it’s not the first time I have seen such a person, right?”
“Right.” Ambrose wasn’t sure what else to say. He hadn’t thought it in so many words, but he had certainly felt what Charles had just said.
“How dare you presume to know what I feel!”
The explosion was unexpected, and Ambrose jumped. Charles’s face was contorted with a fiery anger that didn’t seem completely appropriate in the context of their conversation.
“You sound like that fool Lord Lessing and his ilk, the ones who were always whining that criminal extraction was worse than death. What would you have us do? Fill the O.Z. with prison after prison to accommodate all the incorrigibles, straining our resources to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter for as long as they lived while law-abiding citizens struggled to make ends meet? Would that be better for our society, Ambrose? Is that what you’d prefer to see?”
Ambrose said nothing, frantically searching his own scattered thoughts. Was he saying that? He didn’t remember saying it, or even thinking it.
“Or no, perhaps you’d rather we just turn them loose as they are,” Charles continued, more wound up than ever. He was pacing the cell, punctuating his words with gestures more violent than he usually used. “Yes, that’s it. We should give them a nice stay in prison, then let them out when it’s done even though they have proven they will immediately resume their unlawful and antisocial activities. Yes, innocent people will get hurt. That’s the price we have to pay to respect the rights of everyone, isn’t it? Even those who have no regard for their Queen and their fellow citizens!”
“Um-”
“We don’t do that, Ambrose,” Charles cried, slamming his hand against the barred door, “because to set free people who are definitely going to do harm would be evil! And allowing them to continue living with that impulse to do harm, that would be evil as well. Yes, on the face of it, criminal extraction seems cruel, even barbaric, but it’s ultimately an act of compassion - for society as a whole, and for the individual afflicted with the impulse to destroy. Surely you can understand that, even now.”
Ambrose thought maybe he could understand that. It was a very persuasive argument. At least, it seemed like it. It certainly seemed to be persuading Charles.
“That’s the thing about evil, Ambrose. Sometimes it feels better, because it allows you to avoid making a hard decision. You convince yourself that you’re doing the necessary thing, and that makes it seem okay. But when you do that, Ambrose, when you accept any evil as necessary - any evil - you’re lowering society’s overall resistance to other kinds of evil.”
The zipper chose that moment to itch, and Ambrose reached up to scratch along the right seam. He dug a fingernail a bit too deeply and winced at the pain it caused. When he looked up, he was alarmed to see Charles’s face had turned ghostly pale. He stared at Ambrose like a man seeing his own reflection… and not recognizing himself.
What a weird thought.
Charles got up and moved toward the back of his cell, hugging himself as though against a sudden chill. He was upset, hurting, and Ambrose didn’t understand quite why. He had a sense that he’d somehow been the cause, though, and that was not acceptable.
“Charles?” Charles didn’t turn around or answer, so he said it again. “Charles?”
The other man sighed, his shoulders lifting and dropping, but still didn’t turn around. “What?”
Ambrose hadn’t thought it through this far, so he had to take a few seconds to figure what to say. He so badly wanted to make Charles feel better. Ah! He had it. “Charles, I think you’re right. It’s… it’s probably the right thing, even though it seems wrong. The thing, I mean.” He struggled to remember the name, brightening when he found it. “Criminal extraction. I’m sure that society is overall better off with it.”
Charles still didn’t turn around. Ambrose was getting desperate. He felt he would say anything, anything at all, to make those shoulders straighten.
“In fact, I probably deserved this,” he said, putting behind the words the weight of belief he didn’t feel. “I probably did do something, sometime, something I can’t remember, obviously, that rated-”
Charles spun around then, and Ambrose was surprised by the anger he saw in the man’s eyes. “No! You didn’t! And don’t ever let them-”
Heavy footfalls surprised them both. A group of four men in long leather coats were marching down the corridor toward their cells. Charles apparently forgot his anger as fear elbowed its way to the forefront. Ambrose didn’t realize he was shrinking away from them until he hit the bench with the backs of his knees and sat down unexpectedly.
“Hello, Charles,” said the leader of the little group.
“Lonot.” Charles spat at the floor, somehow making the act look regal rather than vulgar. His poise and defiance in the face of his obvious terror made Ambrose feel proud.
The man he’d called Lonot merely laughed. There was nothing regal about that. “You know, this cell doesn’t really suit you, Charles. Let me take you away from it.”
“And go where?”
“Somewhere where we can talk,” Lonot said. “Where I can ask you questions, and you can give me answers.”
“I’ll save you the trouble. I have no answers.”
“You underestimate yourself, old friend.” At a nod from Lonot, one of the other long-coated men unlocked and opened the door to Charles’s cell. “Come. You’ll find we have some excellent techniques for unlocking hidden memories.”
Ambrose jumped to his feet. No one saw it, as the longcoats all had their backs to his cell, and Charles was staring at Lonot.
“I… I won’t come with you.” There was a hollow, faltering quality to the older man’s voice, the sound of the powerless wielding sticks against cannons.
Another nod from Lonot, and the two other men entered the cell. How do they know the exact meaning of each nod? Ambrose thought. How can they tell ‘you, unlock the cell’ from ‘you other two, go in and drag him out’? How do they know which is to do what?
But the men weren’t dragging Charles out, yet. The first man backhanded him, sending him staggering backward. He fell on the bench, bounced off, and landed on the floor. The second longcoat delivered a vicious kick to his ribs. Charles gave a strangled, breathless cry and doubled into an almost fetal curl.
“Stop it!” shouted Ambrose. “Leave him alone!”
They ignored him entirely as, after another nod from Lonot, the two inside the cell lifted Charles by his arms and began dragging him out of the cell.
“No! No, stop! Don’t do it!” Ambrose was pressing his body hard against the bars of his own cell, reaching out with one arm in an attempt to… what? What could he hope to do? And yet, he didn’t stop. He continued to yell even as Lonot started back down the corridor and the two carrying Charles followed.
He only stopped when the last of the longcoats finally spared him an irritated glance and abruptly stuck a long stick through the bars, touching Ambrose and filling him with a familiar buzzing pain that engulfed everything everywhere. I’m being electrocuted, he thought. The idea of death didn’t seem so bad, for an instant.
He didn’t even feel himself hit the floor.
Chapter three
No, he decided, the worst thing about the cell - the absolute, certain, very worst thing - was the noise.
From the moment he’d become aware of being in the cell, he’d been plagued by this din, a constant not-quite-white noise comprised of sentence fragments, nearly asked questions, incomplete answers. Voices jumped from topic to topic willy-nilly; statements were interrupted by pointless laughter. Conversations were derailed by non-sequiturs which then formed the basis for new conversations which were in turn derailed by other non-sequiturs.
A never-ending stream of vocalization seemed to substitute for running water here - dripping, trickling, saturating, and overflowing; it surged on and on until he feared he’d drown. Expressions of pain, fact, fear and despair, of frustration intermingled; sometimes they were punctuated by begging or sobbing or a fearful cackling that spoke not of joy, but of desperation, even madness.
He tried to ignore it, he tried to make fun of it, and he even tried to drown it out with his own voice. Nothing seemed to make a dent in the tidal waves of chaotic noise. Sometimes it was so unbearable that he found himself screaming for respite: “Everybody shut up! I can’t hear myself think!”
And as this announcement bounced desultorily off the dungeon walls, there was sudden silence, into which muted ambient sound gradually filtered - the dripping of a leak somewhere in the corridor; the distant laughter of two guards somewhere far away. The longed-for but eerie quiet bred a thought with an uncomfortable ring of truth: I *am* hearing myself think.
In those moments, the stillness was unquestionably the worst thing about the cell. Fortunately, such moments never lasted long and were quickly forgotten… mostly.
*********
Eventually, the jumble of misfired thoughts in his head seemed to find some semblance of order, and a degree of linear thought was restored. He was sure “restored” was the right expression; he had the sense that once, he hadn't been too shabby in the thinking department. It might have been a gradual process, or it might have happened all at once. He had no ability to track the passage of time, nor could his perceptions be fully trusted.
Now he could take better stock of his surroundings and try to analyze the situation, which gave him a feeling of purpose. He had no idea why he was in a dungeon, where the dungeon was located, or who was keeping him here. However, he did eventually deduce that he was the only prisoner in this particular wing. Occasionally, distant screams and harsh responses would waft to his ears along the drafty corridor, but they were never close enough for him to make out actual words. And the guards who brought him what he called, for the sake of reference, “food” each day refused to answer his questions with anything but jeers or slaps, but he never heard them jeering or slapping anyone else as they passed the other cells near his.
So it was a momentous event when the men in long coats finally marched into sight and deposited a man into the cell directly across from his. He crept close to the bars and watched intently as they shoved the newcomer inside, tripping him when he failed to stumble as they apparently intended, and laughing when he hit the floor. He remained on the floor - wisely, he thought - as the barred door was lowered, only deigning to stand erect when the guards were on their way back down the corridor.
The stranger was shaken, but his poise was impressive. It was clear from his fine clothing and well-cut graying hair that he was used to more pleasant surroundings and to being treated with respect and consideration, yet he remained remarkably calm and dignified as he slowly examined his surroundings with calculating blue eyes. Only his breathing, which was a bit more rapid than normal, gave away the fear he was feeling.
As a veteran resident, it was probably his duty to reassure the new arrival. “Don’t worry,” he said, too loudly. The man jumped in alarm, and he quickly lowered the volume of his voice. “Sorry. I just meant to say, it’s not as bad as it looks. They mostly leave you alone, as long as you don’t ask them too many questions.” He laughed, a bit too loudly again, and added, “You should especially avoid asking the tall one what happened to his other eye. He’s just a little bit sensitive, it seems.” He smiled and touched the bruise he still bore on one cheek. Yep, still sore.
He stopped talking when he realized the other man was pressed against the bars, staring at him with an expression of shock. He took a step back and quickly glanced down at himself. All his clothes were on - correctly - with no indiscretions. He rubbed a hand along his face to check for unsightly food particles. He couldn’t find an obvious reason for the guy to look so appalled by him, so he glanced behind him. Well, one of the rats was making his rounds looking for discarded food again. Maybe he’d never seen one before.
“Ambrose?” the man asked in a hushed tone.
He frowned. Less than a minute here, and the guy was already naming the rats?
“My god, Ambrose!”
He smiled uncertainly. “Well, I’m not familiar with that particular deity, but I believe wholeheartedly in religious tolerance, so feel free to-hey, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”
The newcomer’s shoulders had drooped and his face was ashen. He stumbled back and shuffled toward the bench, sitting on it heavily. “We thought you were dead.”
Um. Okay. “That’s kind of an odd thing to assume about… someone you’ve never met.”
“You don’t remember anything? I’m not the least bit familiar?”
“Well, no offense, mister, but if I can’t remember a single thing about me, there’s not much hope that I’ll remember you, now is there?”
The man hung his head. “No, there’s no hope. No hope at all.” His voice was thick. He seemed close to tears.
“I’m sorry!” he sputtered, since he’d obviously somehow caused the man distress, although he couldn’t remember how. If there was anything worse than being unable to remember who he was, it was not being able to recall how he’d hurt someone. He’d spent lots of time worrying about what sort of misdeeds he’d committed in his forgotten past.
“At first, we’d held out hope that you’d find a way to escape,” the man was saying, almost as though talking to himself. “Trask and some of the others thought it was foolish, wishful thinking, but the rest of us had faith in that brain of yours.”
Here the stranger glanced up, and he could tell that he was looking at the zipper. Automatically, his hand stole up, checking that it hadn’t worked itself open.
“But when weeks had passed with no sign of you and no word of your fate, we finally accepted that Azkadellia had executed you. Now, it seems… we were wrong.” His tone was despairing, as though being wrong about a friend’s death were the saddest thing imaginable.
“I’m sorry, but… who are you talking to?” Not the most sensitive response, he supposed, but it needed to be asked. He still saw no one else around but the rat.
Impatient, the man snapped, “Who? Is there anyone else here? I’m talking to you, Ambrose!”
“Me, Ambrose? Me Ambrose? Wait - are you saying you know me? I have a name? And you know it?”
“Yes,” the man said slowly and distinctly, “I know you, and your name is Ambrose. You’re the… you were the Queen’s top advisor.”
“What, me? Really? Wow! That’s… that’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
The man smiled slightly, amused in spite of himself. “It certainly was.”
“Okay, so I was the Queen’s top advisor. Who were you? Did I know you well?”
“I’m Charles Farsing, the Queen’s Minister of the Interior. You and I were colleagues.”
“Colleagues, but not friends?”
“I considered you a friend.”
“Did I consider you a friend?”
Charles laughed. The newly named Ambrose found it unexpectedly delightful to hear. “As far as I know, you did. We played chess once a week, a standing arrangement for almost two annuals.”
Ambrose wrinkled his forehead in thought. “Well, I doubt I would have done that if I didn’t enjoy your company. I was probably smart enough to come up with an excuse if I’d wanted to.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Charles said with a smile. In the however long he’d been here, Ambrose had never seen a sincere smile. It flooded his heart with a warmth that both soothed and stung.
“Tell me more!” he said excitedly. “Who else did I know? What was I like?”
“Well, hmm.” Charles leaned back against the wall and thought. “You were, of course, very well-known at court. You knew all the important officials, everyone else in the Queen’s Cabinet.”
“The Queen! I must have known her as well.”
“It would have been difficult to advise her otherwise.”
Ambrose laughed. “Very true. So, how did she come to choose me as her… What did you say my name is?”
“Ambrose.”
“Ambrose. Right. So how did she come to choose me to advise her?”
“As I understand it, you were spotted while you were still at university. You had made quite a name for yourself as a scientific researcher and engineer. The Queen was advised to offer you a position in the Division of Science.”
“Science! I knew I was a scientist of some sort. I could just tell. What else?”
“Well, you continued to draw attention with a series of new technologies. The Queen was so impressed that she elevated you to positions of greater responsibility several times. Unfortunately, this ruffled some feathers amongst some of the more senior scientists.”
“Really? Why?”
“They didn’t like reporting to a much younger man.”
“What much younger man?”
Charles sighed. “That would be you, Ambrose.”
“Oh. I’m young?”
“Well, you were at the time, at least.”
“Wow. Yeah, I guess that would tend to upset older people. What happened then?”
“Well, a lucky thing came up: a cave-in at the largest selsium mine in the O.Z.”
Ambrose stared, not sure he understood properly. “That’s a lucky thing?”
“It was lucky for you, as it turned out. It was a huge crisis - forty-seven men were trapped inside a mountain. Prevailing wisdom dictated a traditional approach - drill, dig, assess, repeat. Very slow, and only successful in saving lives about forty percent of the time.
“You proposed a radical new approach, using experimental technology that melted rock and burned it away. There was great resistance to the idea by those in the Division of Science who didn’t support you, but the Queen approved the use of the technique.”
“She did?” He didn’t have a single memory of the Queen, but it was absurdly pleasing to learn that she’d had more faith in his judgment than in his detractors’.
“Your idea worked. All the miners who’d survived the cave-in were rescued. The Queen realized that you possessed not just a fine technical and scientific mind but a gift for analysis and imagination, and that was when she realized that you would be even more valuable to the kingdom as one of her personal advisors.”
Ambrose could only gape, mesmerized by the story of a life he’d lived but would never remember. It was hard to know whether to revel in the knowledge of his forgotten triumphs, or to feel cheated by the theft if his awareness of them. He tried to make up for it all by repeating Charles’s words to himself several times, striving to memorize them, if such a thing was possible for him.
“You really have no memory of any of it? Nothing at all?”
He shook his head. “I wish I did. It all sounds so wonderful.”
Charles stood suddenly and came to the bars of his cell, peering at Ambrose intently. “Try very hard to remember. Can you recall anything at all about, say, the last time you and I saw each other?”
Ambrose was puzzled. “About… No, did you forget? I can’t remember anything about, well… anything.”
“Yes, but have you ever had anyone around who did remember to prompt you with details?”
“No, I haven’t!” Ambrose jumped up excitedly. “What a great idea! Prompt away, Charles. Go on, try it!”
“All right, just keep your voice down.” Charles glanced around, which Ambrose thought was a little silly - it’s not like the rats, or even the guards, were likely to be interested in the story of two friends’ last mutually cognizant moments together. “Close your eyes. Clear your mind and picture yourself in a room.”
“A big room?”
“No, not big.”
“A small one, then.”
“Call it medium-sized. A dark, medium-sized room.”
“Is it nighttime?”
“No, mid-afternoon.”
“Then why is it dark?”
“The shades are drawn.”
“Why are the-”
“Ambrose, please!” Charles’s quiet voice became sharp.
“Right. Sorry.”
Ambrose pictured being in a murky room with Charles. He imagined the other man’s features smoothed by the dimness, the gray of his hair darkened in a flattering trick of too little light. They were talking not in whispers but in muted voices, as though trying not to wake someone sleeping in a nearby room. Strangely, he imagined more than two voices. Several more, in fact. “Are we alone in the room?” he asked without opening his eyes.
Charles hesitated before answering. “No,” he finally said.
Ambrose squinted behind his closed eyelids. No faces, but he saw other people in brocaded coats like the ones he and Charles wore. “Is it a meeting of the Queen’s cabinet?”
“Not exactly. Why do you ask? Do you remember something?”
He wondered distantly why Charles sounded anxious rather than excited at the prospect, but was too busy trying to decide if he was remembering, or merely fabricating a scene based on Charles’s suggestion. He tried to relax and let the scene take him wherever it went.
There was a solemnity to the gathering. He couldn’t really make out what was being said, but the look on Charles’s face was grave, and there was a feeling of urgency in the room. Of course, maybe that was just because he wanted so badly to believe this was a real memory, however murky.
“Well?” the here-and-now Charles was asking. “What do you see? Can you remember anything?”
Ambrose was getting irritated. How was he to know if he was remembering a real event? Who was to say that the scene in his head wasn’t a product of an intense desire to remember coupled with a healthy dollop of extreme suggestibility? Concentrating harder, he tried to see more of the darkened room, to make out faces. Maintaining the scene was a struggle; it kept losing focus, each element skidding away as attention was applied to it. It was like grabbing a bar of soap in a bathtub.
He couldn’t tell how many people were present, but he sensed there were eight or ten altogether. He was addressing them, explaining something, as they all looked at a diagram on a large piece of paper spread over a desktop, which he illuminated with a small light. He thought there was mention of the Queen. Perhaps it was some kind of informal cabinet meeting.
“Was the Queen at this meeting?” he asked hopefully.
“No.”
How disappointing. He would really have liked to see her, even if it was only his imagined version of her. Had he fallen so far that he was no longer worthy of even a remembered glimpse of the Queen who had relied upon his judgment?
This was no longer exciting or fun. Now that he knew a little about his former life, he also knew exactly what sort of things he had lost, and that made the lack of memories even more punishing. If he had learned that his life was insignificant, the loss of all memory of it would perhaps be easier to bear. Now knowing that he had made real contributions to the lives of others and had helped shape the Queen’s decisions for the kingdom just further fueled his desire - no, his need - to remember it. If he couldn’t remember, it was as though it had never happened, and he really needed to know for a fact that he had actually happened.
Opening his eyes, Ambrose turned from the bars and stomped away. He couldn’t make much of an exit, given the confines of the cell, but he did what he could.
“What’s wrong? Did you remember something?”
“No, but thanks so much for all the detailed prompting.”
“I set the scene. I didn’t think I should say too much.”
“Oh, well, that was nicely handled, then.”
“There’s no reason to be angry with me because you can’t remember anything, Ambrose. I’m not the one who did this to you.”
Now that brought up an interesting question. “Did what to me? Why can’t I remember anything?”
Charles frowned in surprise. “You… don’t know?”
“What? Don’t know what?”
For a moment, Charles seemed at a loss. “It’s… Oh, I can’t believe they didn’t tell you already.”
“Maybe they did! How would I know for sure? Maybe that’s just one more thing I’ve forgotten. Why don’t you tell me again, all right? Then we’ll both be sure I know about it.”
“Very well. Azkadellia’s people performed what’s known as a criminal extraction upon you. A significant portion of your brain was removed from your skull, taking with it much of your identity, your memories, and your knowledge.”
Ambrose heard the words in the way that one feels a light breeze blowing the tails of one’s coat. Nothing of significance stirred. It didn’t sound real. “I don’t understand. I don’t know any Azkadellia. Why would someone do that?”
“You do know her. Did, anyway. And apparently, she did it because you wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know.”
“What?”
“I believe it was something to do with one of your inventions. I don’t know for sure, I wasn’t there.”
“Then how do you know exactly what she did to me? The brain thing, I mean.”
“Because of the zipper! It’s not as though I wouldn’t know what that means.”
The zipper. Ambrose reached up to touch it gingerly. He’d done this over and over, and never questioned why it was there. Or had he? He couldn’t remember.
“You… you’ve seen people with zippers like this before?”
Charles threw up his hands, strangely exasperated. “Of course! We all have. It’s what’s done to those who commit particularly vile crimes who resist rehabilitation by other methods. Hence the term ‘criminal extraction.’”
Ambrose cocked his head and thought this over. He wanted to make sure he understood it all properly. “You mean this is a routine punishment?”
“I wouldn’t call it routine. It’s reserved for criminals who defy rehabilitation.”
“So the answer is to rip out their brains and turn them into… into…” Was he unable remember the right word, or could he simply not bear to apply it to himself? “That’s utterly barbaric!”
“I’m so sorry, Ambrose. It should never have happened to you.”
“It shouldn’t happen to anyone! What sort of enlightened society would condone such a monstrous practice?”
Charles bristled. “A society that rejects the notion of capital punishment while recognizing an obligation to protect the public. A society that seeks to ensure public safety without resorting to putting the worst offenders to death. The sentence is neither celebrated nor common.”
Something tickled his mind. “I think someone told me that this happens pretty frequently.” He tried to remember where he’d heard that, frowning with the effort of wading through the noise that was kicking up again inside his head. Even amidst the din of his whirlwind of almost-thoughts, the half-remembered assertion about the frequency of “zipperheads” rang with authenticity. Where had he gotten it?
“It’s not as though it’s done for petty thievery or traffic violations!” Charles said hotly. “Only the most reprehensible, incorrigible criminals receive such a punishment!”
“Yeah?” Ambrose struggled to stay focused on the conversation, which he felt was important even as he was losing the grasp of why it was. “What kind of criminal was I, Charles? What made me...?” The noise was shockingly bad now. What were the words Charles had used? “What made me ‘reprehensible and incorrigible’?” He was aware of panting and grunting as the chaos tried to overwhelm his train of thought. “Was it my ‘gift for analysis and imagination?’ Or… or maybe m-my devotion to the… the Queen?”
And then it was just too much. The clamor in his mind was like standing in the atrium of the Great Hall in Central City while a two hundred-piece brass band played at top volume. He clutched his disfigured skull in anguish and was dimly aware of bawling, “By the suns, shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Ambrose fell to his knees and tried to concentrate on just breathing - in and out; it was very predictable - and gradually noticed that the racket was receding. As the noise faded like departing fog, he could hear Charles saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wish it… Why couldn’t they have just… I’m sorry, Ambrose. I’m so, so sorry.”
For what? Ambrose wondered. What’s he apologizing for? He had a sense that they’d been arguing, but he wasn’t quite sure what about. Releasing his head from the death-grip of his hands, Ambrose looked through the bars at his fellow prisoner.
The other man - what was he called? Oh yes, Charles - was slumped on his bench. Amazing what a difference posture could make in how one was perceived, Ambrose thought. When Charles sat or stood straight, you almost dared not question or disagree with him; he had such gravity, such dignity. Hunched over, he looked just like everyone else. When he spoke now, it was in the hoarse, whispery voice of a tired old man.
“It was never meant to be used this way, Ambrose. No one intended it to come to this.”
“What?” Ambrose was surprised to find he was a little hoarse, too. His throat had a raw feel to it. Had he been screaming? “What wasn’t meant to be used what way?”
Charles sighed heavily, closing his eyes as his head lolled back to rest against the wall. “Criminal extraction. It was intended only to protect society from individuals who could not follow its rules, not to rape brilliant, loyal minds to obtain information.”
The whole conversation came back to him suddenly, or enough of it that Ambrose felt the heat of remembered anger. With a little stoking, he could be angry again, but it was really too much work. “Oh. Right.”
He’d meant only to indicate that he now remembered what they’d been talking about, but Charles apparently thought he was being sarcastic. “The penalty was meant for the greater good! I’ll grant there’s a certain brutality to it, but it was never, ever meant to exploit or to torment!” Charles rubbed his face tiredly. “Anything can be perverted by evil intent.”
Ambrose sat down on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees. He felt exhausted… or perhaps he was just empathizing with Charles’s obvious fatigue? “I suppose so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ambrose blinked. Was the question rhetorical, or was Charles seriously demanding a definition of “I suppose so”? Feeling like a man with ten legs walking through a minefield, he chose not to answer.
“You’re suggesting that there was already evil intent? That only an evil system would practice something like partial brain extraction to keep criminals in line, is that it?”
What under the suns was the right answer? No would likely be rejected as a lie, and yes would simply provoke more defensiveness. “Maybe?”
Seemingly reinvigorated, Charles startled him by slamming a palm against the metal bench and launching himself to his feet, beginning to pace back and forth. “Ours is not an evil society, Ambrose! The Outer Zone has always been renowned for its commitment to fairness and public welfare.”
“Okay.”
“We are not a cruel people, surgically altering people’s brains just to penalize them. We did it because they were a danger to others and could not be persuaded to change, for their own good or the good of the O.Z.”
“All right.”
“There’s nothing evil about keeping the kingdom safe!”
“No, there isn’t.”
“I didn’t like that it was necessary, you know. I didn’t enjoy any reminder that there were people who just couldn’t be set on the path to good citizenship any other way. It was never pleasant when I happened to see one of those poor devils wandering Central City, post-extraction. I often gave them a few notes to help them find their way to food and shelter.”
“That was good of you,” Ambrose said, meaning it.
“Oh, you’re thinking I could have done more! That I was making a token gesture to ease my conscience.”
“No, I-”
“Sometimes things are necessary, Ambrose, unpleasant things that we’d prefer didn’t exist. This is one of those things.”
“Okay.”
“But the circumstances,” Charles said, suddenly seeming desperate, clinging to one of the horizontal bars, “the circumstances are what make the difference. Ambrose, when I saw what they had done to you, I was… I was horrified. Horrified! There is no way this should ever, ever have happened to a man like you.”
Ambrose considered it. Something was niggling. “That’s not exactly true,” he said.
Charles’s face became stone. “What? That it shouldn’t have happened? Or do you think I wasn’t horrified?”
“Yes! I mean, no! I mean…” How to convey what he really meant?
“Well, I was! I was devastated to learn what had happened to you.”
“No, I believe that,” Ambrose said earnestly. “It’s just that… well, you didn’t look… horrified, exactly.”
“What?”
“Shocked, yes, and upset and appalled and like that. You were horrified that it was me that it happened to.”
Charles was silent for a good many seconds. “But not horrified on general principle. Is that what you’re getting at? You understand that it’s not the first time I have seen such a person, right?”
“Right.” Ambrose wasn’t sure what else to say. He hadn’t thought it in so many words, but he had certainly felt what Charles had just said.
“How dare you presume to know what I feel!”
The explosion was unexpected, and Ambrose jumped. Charles’s face was contorted with a fiery anger that didn’t seem completely appropriate in the context of their conversation.
“You sound like that fool Lord Lessing and his ilk, the ones who were always whining that criminal extraction was worse than death. What would you have us do? Fill the O.Z. with prison after prison to accommodate all the incorrigibles, straining our resources to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter for as long as they lived while law-abiding citizens struggled to make ends meet? Would that be better for our society, Ambrose? Is that what you’d prefer to see?”
Ambrose said nothing, frantically searching his own scattered thoughts. Was he saying that? He didn’t remember saying it, or even thinking it.
“Or no, perhaps you’d rather we just turn them loose as they are,” Charles continued, more wound up than ever. He was pacing the cell, punctuating his words with gestures more violent than he usually used. “Yes, that’s it. We should give them a nice stay in prison, then let them out when it’s done even though they have proven they will immediately resume their unlawful and antisocial activities. Yes, innocent people will get hurt. That’s the price we have to pay to respect the rights of everyone, isn’t it? Even those who have no regard for their Queen and their fellow citizens!”
“Um-”
“We don’t do that, Ambrose,” Charles cried, slamming his hand against the barred door, “because to set free people who are definitely going to do harm would be evil! And allowing them to continue living with that impulse to do harm, that would be evil as well. Yes, on the face of it, criminal extraction seems cruel, even barbaric, but it’s ultimately an act of compassion - for society as a whole, and for the individual afflicted with the impulse to destroy. Surely you can understand that, even now.”
Ambrose thought maybe he could understand that. It was a very persuasive argument. At least, it seemed like it. It certainly seemed to be persuading Charles.
“That’s the thing about evil, Ambrose. Sometimes it feels better, because it allows you to avoid making a hard decision. You convince yourself that you’re doing the necessary thing, and that makes it seem okay. But when you do that, Ambrose, when you accept any evil as necessary - any evil - you’re lowering society’s overall resistance to other kinds of evil.”
The zipper chose that moment to itch, and Ambrose reached up to scratch along the right seam. He dug a fingernail a bit too deeply and winced at the pain it caused. When he looked up, he was alarmed to see Charles’s face had turned ghostly pale. He stared at Ambrose like a man seeing his own reflection… and not recognizing himself.
What a weird thought.
Charles got up and moved toward the back of his cell, hugging himself as though against a sudden chill. He was upset, hurting, and Ambrose didn’t understand quite why. He had a sense that he’d somehow been the cause, though, and that was not acceptable.
“Charles?” Charles didn’t turn around or answer, so he said it again. “Charles?”
The other man sighed, his shoulders lifting and dropping, but still didn’t turn around. “What?”
Ambrose hadn’t thought it through this far, so he had to take a few seconds to figure what to say. He so badly wanted to make Charles feel better. Ah! He had it. “Charles, I think you’re right. It’s… it’s probably the right thing, even though it seems wrong. The thing, I mean.” He struggled to remember the name, brightening when he found it. “Criminal extraction. I’m sure that society is overall better off with it.”
Charles still didn’t turn around. Ambrose was getting desperate. He felt he would say anything, anything at all, to make those shoulders straighten.
“In fact, I probably deserved this,” he said, putting behind the words the weight of belief he didn’t feel. “I probably did do something, sometime, something I can’t remember, obviously, that rated-”
Charles spun around then, and Ambrose was surprised by the anger he saw in the man’s eyes. “No! You didn’t! And don’t ever let them-”
Heavy footfalls surprised them both. A group of four men in long leather coats were marching down the corridor toward their cells. Charles apparently forgot his anger as fear elbowed its way to the forefront. Ambrose didn’t realize he was shrinking away from them until he hit the bench with the backs of his knees and sat down unexpectedly.
“Hello, Charles,” said the leader of the little group.
“Lonot.” Charles spat at the floor, somehow making the act look regal rather than vulgar. His poise and defiance in the face of his obvious terror made Ambrose feel proud.
The man he’d called Lonot merely laughed. There was nothing regal about that. “You know, this cell doesn’t really suit you, Charles. Let me take you away from it.”
“And go where?”
“Somewhere where we can talk,” Lonot said. “Where I can ask you questions, and you can give me answers.”
“I’ll save you the trouble. I have no answers.”
“You underestimate yourself, old friend.” At a nod from Lonot, one of the other long-coated men unlocked and opened the door to Charles’s cell. “Come. You’ll find we have some excellent techniques for unlocking hidden memories.”
Ambrose jumped to his feet. No one saw it, as the longcoats all had their backs to his cell, and Charles was staring at Lonot.
“I… I won’t come with you.” There was a hollow, faltering quality to the older man’s voice, the sound of the powerless wielding sticks against cannons.
Another nod from Lonot, and the two other men entered the cell. How do they know the exact meaning of each nod? Ambrose thought. How can they tell ‘you, unlock the cell’ from ‘you other two, go in and drag him out’? How do they know which is to do what?
But the men weren’t dragging Charles out, yet. The first man backhanded him, sending him staggering backward. He fell on the bench, bounced off, and landed on the floor. The second longcoat delivered a vicious kick to his ribs. Charles gave a strangled, breathless cry and doubled into an almost fetal curl.
“Stop it!” shouted Ambrose. “Leave him alone!”
They ignored him entirely as, after another nod from Lonot, the two inside the cell lifted Charles by his arms and began dragging him out of the cell.
“No! No, stop! Don’t do it!” Ambrose was pressing his body hard against the bars of his own cell, reaching out with one arm in an attempt to… what? What could he hope to do? And yet, he didn’t stop. He continued to yell even as Lonot started back down the corridor and the two carrying Charles followed.
He only stopped when the last of the longcoats finally spared him an irritated glance and abruptly stuck a long stick through the bars, touching Ambrose and filling him with a familiar buzzing pain that engulfed everything everywhere. I’m being electrocuted, he thought. The idea of death didn’t seem so bad, for an instant.
He didn’t even feel himself hit the floor.
Chapter three