At the Narrow Passage (16 page)

"You know why I'm here, don't you?"
"I think so."
"Then let's be honest. You can start by telling me your real name."
Why not? I asked myself. There wasn't much point in pretending to be a
British colonial when everybody knew I wasn't.
"Thimbron Parnassos," I said at last, and it was the truth.
"I think I shall call you Eric. It is easier to say."
"It's up to you."
"Now listen to me, Eric," she said earnestly. "We're not your enemies here
unless you make us be. I only want to help you. Your whole life has been
a series of lies and you had no way of knowing that you were being told
lies. If you'll merely be open-minded about it, you'll see the truth."
"And what is this truth you want me to see?"
"That the Kriths are monsters determined to enslave the human race,"
she said slowly.
"That's kind of hard for me to swallow," I told her. "I've only seen
them helping us."
"In due time it will all be explained to you. All I ask, all that any of us
asks, is that you listen."
"Okay," I said. "I've been given to understand that if I don't,
I'll probably get my head blown off."
"Probably," she said and smiled. "Now I'd like to run a few tests on you
just to establish some reference points."
"Tests?"
"To establish truth indices, you might say. Will you cooperate?"
"Would it matter if I didn't?"
"I would prefer to use as few drugs as possible."
"Okay, let's get on with it."
G'lendal smiled again. "Very good, Eric."
She rose from the chair, placed her case on the table beside the sofa.
"First I'd like for you to take your clothes off and give them to Nardi,"
she said. "Then you may go into the bathroom and shave and shower,
if you like. I'm sure it would make you feel better."
Nardi had a gun in case I didn't do as she said, so I undressed.
"Everything," she said, smiliing when I got down to my shorts and paused
for a moment. "I'm sorry if it embarrasses you, but it's necessary."
I nodded, unsnapped the shorts, and let them drop to the floor. I stood
there as bare-naked as the day I was born, and it didn't seem to bother
anyone but me. I suppose I'd been around the British too long.
"Roll them up and hand them to Nardi, please," G'lendal said, neither
looking at me nor ignoring me as she opened her case and reached inside.
"Your personal possessions -- if you have any left -- will be inspected
and returned to you." She glanced over her shoulder at Nardi. "I assume
that Scoti checked him," she said.
Nardi nodded. "He got all the dangerous stuff off him while he was
unconscious." Nardi didn't look at me while he spoke. "He's an Augie,
of course."
"Of course," G'lendal replied.
She had taken several small objects from her case and now held them in
her hands.
"I assume that your augmentation control center is located between your
shoulder blades?" she asked.
I nodded. I thought she could have found it easily enough even if I
denied it.
"Hold still for a moment, please," she said. "This won't hurt at all,
but it will render your augmentation controls useless."
She approached my naked back and pressed cold metal against it. There
was a short shrill buzzing, and I felt something dying within me,
electrobiological circuits being killed. As she said, it didn't hurt --
at least not physically. I felt as though I had lost a part of me.
"That's all there is to it," she said, stepping away. "You're an ordinary
man now, Eric. Try to remember that."
I didn't speak.
"You may go shave and shower now," she said. "The bathroom is fully
equipped."
When I came back into the room, my body still damp and my face still
tingling from the odd shaver that seemed to dissolve my whiskers, a wet
towel wrapped around my waist, G'lendal was assembling something on the
table that I took to be a lie detector of some sort.
"Feel better?" she asked.
"Yes, some," I said, "but I could use some sleep." Though my senses
were dulled from lack of sleep, G'lendal had dulled them even more
by removing my augmentation. As she said, I was an ordinary man now,
though I didn't resent her having done it. I would have done the same
to an augmented captive.
"This won't take long," she said. "Then you can sleep as long as you like.
Please take off that towel and sit down in this chair." She pointed with
a long-nailed finger.
"You need any help?" Nardi asked.
"No, just stay where you are," G'lendal answered. Then to me,
"Your wounds need attending to."
"I wouldn't object," I told her, feeling the tingling along my side
from the bullet graze and the ache in the back of my head where Scoti
had slugged me.
"Very well," the black girl said, fishing another kit from her case.
"Hold still."
She sprinkled a bluish powder on the graze wound on my side and then
covered it with a transparent adhesive bandage that seemed to melt into
my flesh. I suppose that she did about the same to the back of my head,
though I was unable to observe.
"That feel better?" she asked.
"Yes, I think so."
"Good," she said. "Now I'm going to tape some electrodes to your body.
Don't be alarmed. They won't hurt."
I didn't answer, but then it seemed that I didn't need to. From the
thing on the table she carried a bunch of thin wires to where I sat,
laid them across the back of the chair and began attaching the wires to
my skin with a silvery-looking tape. One to each temple. One to each side
of my neck. One on each shoulder. One above my heart. One just above my
navel. One on each hip. One to the inside of each thigh. Even though her
motions were smooth and professional, the touch of her woman's fingers
excited me.
After she was finished, G'lendal stood behind me for a moment, tinkering
with the lie-detection device. Nardi sat on the bed across the room
watching me disinterestedly as if this were something he had seen a
number of times before and wasn't too excited by.
"Now hold still just a moment," the black-skinned girl said.
Then something cold touched my left shoulder. There was a hissing sound
and a sudden moistness entering my flesh.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Don't be alarmed," she said -- I wasn't. "It was just a mild relaxer.
I know better than to try to use any of the so-called truth serums on
you Timeliners."
"Okay."
"Now I'm going to ask you a few questions," she said. "You can answer
them any way you like. Right now you don't have to tell the truth unless
you want to."
I'm sure that G'lendal knew that my training and conditioning,
independent of my now inoperative augmentation circuits, could fool
the lie detector, but she was going to try anyway. Okay, I thought,
let's play your silly game.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Thimbron Parnassos." My mind and body automatically gave the device
a truthful response. But then it would have if I'd said Hieronymus
Merganthaler.
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-three." Truthful response.
"When were you born?"
"2294 as we figure it at home. 1938 local time."
Truthful response.
"Where were you born?"
"Sibyl, North Ionnia." Truthful response.
"Please equate that with some location in this Paratime."
"West Cheshire, England, near Hoylake." Truthful response -- which it was.
Then -- I supposed at the time that the sensation I felt in my mind was
caused by the drugs she had injected me with. I still find it almost
impossible to describe the feeling. It was, maybe, as if the top of my
skull had been painlessly opened and someone were tickling my brain
with a feather or maybe a very gentle puppy were sniffing at my gray
matter. It was not really an unpleasant sensation, but it was one that
I did not understand and that disturbed me.
"How long have you been in the hire of the Kriths?"
G'lendal asked.
"Fourteen years."
"And what is your present position?"
"Mercenary soldier, absolute rank roughly equal to that of a colonel in
the British Army."
"What do you think of the Kriths?"
"In twenty-five words or less?" I asked.
"In as many as it takes."
"Okay. Personally, I don't care for them. I mean, as individuals. There's
something about them that I just can't bring myself to like. But what
they're doing is good. It isn't just altruism -- I'd suspect
that
.
They're looking out for themselves, but to do that, they've got to help
us humans. They're acting in their own rational self-interest to prevent
their destruction by alien invaders two thousand years from now --
and they're saving mankind in the process. How's that?"
"That's fine."
"How many words?"
"I didn't count."
The feathery tickling inside my head had now become a plucking: a chicken,
gently at first, then with more force was pecking at my brain in search
of kernels of corn. I didn't like it.
"Have you ever had doubts about their intentions?"
"Yes." Truthful response.
"Please explain."
"Well, I think anyone at some time or other will have a few doubts about
anything he believes. It's only human. And I've had some vague, random
doubts, but there's never been any real reason for them. Everything
the Kriths have ever told me has been, sooner or later, supported by
objective fact."
"Everything?"
"Yes, everything I can think of."
"What about the Cross-Line Civilization in the far Temporal East?"
"What about it?"
"Tell me about it."
Suddenly I had a strange sensation of disassociation, as if I had left
my body for an instant and were now standing or sitting to the rear of
it looking at my own back. For less than a heartbeat I saw the chair
in which I sat, the back of my injured head, my own naked shoulders,
the wires from G'lendal's lie detector trailing across the chair to
where they were taped to my body. Then it was over, and all I felt was
a vague swimming in my head.
"What about it in particular?" I was asking. "There's a lot of ground
to cover when you start talking about fifty Lines that have blended into
a single civilization."
"No," G'lendal said suddenly. "Forget about it. We'll go on to something
else." She paused for a moment. "Why did you and your companions kidnap
Count von Heinen and his wife?"
"For information."
"What kind of information?"
"About nuclear weapons. We wanted Von Heinen so that we could probe him
about . . ."
It happened again. This time more definitely and for a longer period of
time. I -- the consciousness of me -- was sitting in a chair -- no, on the
sofa beside the lie detector, watching the dials and meters and glancing
frequently at the back of my head. There was another consciousness there
with me, but I could tell nothing about it, other than the fact that it
was there.
I tried to will the eyes I looked through down at the hands of the body
I wore, but before I could tell whether I was having any luck . . .
I was back in my own body.
"What the hell are you doing to me?"
I demanded, leaping out of the
chair and turning to face G'lendal.
"I'll stop," she said, her face just barely showing shock.
Her hand snapped a switch.
"It's off now," she said, looking directly back into my eyes.
"What is that thing?"
"I can't tell you," G'lendal said. "I'm sorry. Please sit back in the chair,
and I'll remove the electrodes."
I did as she' said and a moment later felt her fingers on my temples
and then sudden pull of hair as she jerked the tape away.
"It's a kind of mind probe, isn't it?" I asked.
"No, not really," she answered, pulling the electrodes from my neck.
But it was, I was sure. Not the kind of mind probes we used. Ours recorded
the electromagnetic fields of the brain, interpreted them into words and
symbols, recorded them on paper and tape, analyzed them with computers.
Her machine, though, I thought, did something more direct. It actually
entered the mind and dug for what it wanted, and in that way maybe it
could bypass my conditioning. So it seemed to me at the time, anyway.
When G'lendal had finished removing all the electrodes she had taped to
my body, she packed all her gear carefully in the case and turned to me
one final time, saying, "For now, that will be all, but I will probably
want to talk with you again."
I shrugged. I was in no position to argue with her, even if I'd felt so
inclined. And, in truth, I didn't think I'd mind seeing
her
again at all.
"Good day, then, Eric," she said, and, with Nardi following her like a
faithful dog, she left the room.
I was left alone, wondering what was going to happen next.
As it turned out, very little happened until the next day.
14
The Greatest Lie
When I awoke the next morning, it took me a few moments to orient myself
and remember the bizarre series of events of the day before that had
led me to captivity in this place called Staunton, somewhere under the
earth of a place called Florida Here and Now.
It wasn't until I sat up that I noticed the tray of food sitting on
a table beside the bed and the clothing draped across the end of the
bed. Well, someone was thinking about me.
First I dressed in slacks and sport shirt of the local Line and then ate
the still warm and rather conventional, by local standards, breakfast
of bacon and eggs, coffee, orange juice, toast and jelly that had been
provided for me.
Then I lay back on the bed and waited to see what was next. I had a
long wait.
Since there wasn't much of anything else to do, I lit a cigarette
and picked up the three books that had been left in the room. After
looking at the inviting cover of
Paradise in Paratime
and deciding
that G'lendal was even better looking than the lovely girl on the cover,
I put it aside for
The Greatest Lie
.
The author, a fellow named Martin Latham, claimed to have been born in one
of the Romano-Carolingian Lines where the Kriths had made their presence
known quite some time ago. He told a little about his own Line -- all of
which seemed to be true since I had been there or to one very close to it
-- and then went on to tell how he discovered the "Lie," as he called it.
Since the "Lie" was one of the things that was stressed over and over
again the whole time I was at Staunton, I might as well tell you about
Latham's so-called discovery of it as well as I can remember it. I wish I
had a copy of the book, and I'd give you this verbatim, but I don't. But
it went something llke this: