Time Will Run Back (14 page)

As Edith’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she could notice that her five cell mates had gone back to sleep. Cautiously she felt her way to the floor, and tried to stretch out and join them. She stared into the darkness.

In another five minutes the Black Maria stopped again, and this time Maxwell was led out. When his blindfold was removed, he found himself in a sort of reception hall before a desk. On the wall in front of him was a sign: RUTHLESS EXTERMINATION OF WRECKERS. The man behind the desk ordered him to empty out his pockets. Maxwell took out his ration books, passport, workbook, pencil, watch, and laid them on the desk. They were all he had. A guard felt his pockets.

He was registered, fingerprinted, blindfolded again, taken on an elevator, and pushed out. His blindfold was removed.

He found himself in a large white cell, with not a single piece of furniture in it but a stool. The whole ceiling was covered with blindingly bright electric lights. A steel cell door clanked behind him.

There were no windows—no way of telling whether it was night or daylight outside.

When he had been sitting on the backless stool, as he judged, half an hour, he tried to lie on the white stone floor and get some sleep. The floor was cold. The light, reflected from all sides and from the floor itself, was inescapable.

After a while he got up again and paced around, then tried to lie down again. How long this went on—three, seven, ten hours—he could not have said. At last two silent guards opened his cell door and motioned him to come along with them. He was so tired mentally that he found it difficult to concentrate.

With an effort he told himself that what he was going to need most now was courage, fortitude, strength.

He was led before a police captain at the same desk where he had been registered.

“You know what you’re charged with, of course?” asked the captain.

“I have no idea,” said Maxwell. “I’ve done nothing against the laws.”

He had no sooner said this than he realized it was not strictly true. The laws were so drawn, so numerous and so all-embracing, that it was virtually impossible for any denizen of Wonworld to avoid technical violations every day.

“I may as well warn you now,” continued the captain, “that you will save yourself considerable trouble by confessing immediately.”

“I have nothing to confess. I do not even know what I am charged with.”

The captain turned to a uniformed clerk next to him. “Read it to him.”

“The charge, or the confession?” asked the clerk.

“Oh, the charge.”

The clerk read the charge in a rapid, slovenly monotone. Maxwell had difficulty in following, but it appeared to accuse him of deliberately misdesigning the proposed new Lenin super-dam—designing it in such a way that it would break in a crisis—and specifying materials, such as types of steel, types of concrete, and types of electrical machinery that he, Maxwell, knew to be in short supply and unobtainable, though they were no better than other materials that he knew to be in ample supply. The charge also accused him of conspiring with other people, yet unknown, to insist on these specifications, to follow bourgeois engineering formulae, and to demand unobtainable skills on the part of workers.

“Well?” asked the captain.

“All this is untrue,” said Maxwell. “Of course I had to specify materials that would be sure to stand up under the maximum stresses and strains—”

“You refuse, then, to sign the confession?”

“What confession?”

The captain turned wearily to the clerk. “Read the confession.”

The clerk began to read in the same rapid and unintelligible monotone.

Maxwell broke in. “I can’t even understand what he’s saying!”

With an air of weary patience, the captain turned to the clerk. “Hand him the confession.”

Maxwell read it. “I, EN—57, sometimes known under the name of John Maxwell,” it began, “being of sound mind and body, have been driven by my conscience to make a clean breast of...”

It went on to say that the charge didn’t begin to measure the real scope and degradation of Maxwell’s crime. It described the careful cunning with which he had begun to lay his plans. It told of the bourgeois ideology that had corrupted him. In the confession he repeatedly debased himself, repeatedly insisted on how low he had sunk, repeatedly emphasized the greatness and goodness of Stalenin, and especially the greatness and goodness of Bolshekov, one sight of whose glorious face had once made him hesitate in his determination to carry through his dark scheme.

“It’s my duty to inform you,” said the captain, “that if you confess there will be considerable mitigation of your punishment. You will be sent to a concentration camp, no doubt, but for a maximum of eight years. And nothing will happen to your daughter.”

Maxwell turned pale. “What will happen to my daughter if I
don’t
confess?”

“I’ll leave that to your own imagination.... Well?”

Maxwell stood silent.

The captain prompted him. “You hear about a lot of people who confess, don’t you?”

Maxwell nodded. He read these “confessions” every day in the
New Truth.

“Ever hear of anybody who
didn’t
confess?” The captain was smiling grimly.

Maxwell never had. He knew of many people who simply disappeared, without explanation from anyone. These must have been the people who refused to “confess.”

A new key to the system suddenly opened something in his mind. There were terrible consequences for weakness, but still more terrible consequences, and no corresponding reward, for Strength. If you “confessed” to crimes that you did not commit, you were disgraced, shunned, despised, condemned to a life of utter wretchedness and horror. But if you stood up with superhuman courage against all threats to yourself or even to those you loved, nobody ever heard of your courage, nobody ever learned of what you had withstood. You had not even the satisfaction of setting an example to inspire others. A known martyrdom was one thing: a known martyrdom was something for which a man might gladly give up his life, allow himself to be put to torture—yes, even sacrifice those he loved more than himself for the greater final good of humanity. But an unknown martyrdom? ... A meaningless martyrdom? ...

“Well?” asked the captain.

Maxwell stood silent.

The captain wearily pressed a button on his desk. Two guards entered.

“Take him to the Second Degree Room.”

He was led down a corridor into a chamber that might once have been a big cell. It was illuminated only by three giant spotlights. Behind them as he entered, Maxwell could dimly make out a police official behind a desk, another on a chair to the left.

He was led so that he faced into the three spotlights at the exact point on which they were concentrated. They were blinding.

The questioning came from a voice behind the desk. “Number?... Name, if any?... Address?... Occupation?... You are charged with... What have you to say in answer to...? Do you deny that...?”

He heard himself answering mechanically. He could think of nothing but the blinding lights. The questioning went on and on. His legs and back became like lead....

His questioner stopped. Maxwell heard him get up and say something in a low voice to someone who had just come in. How long had Maxwell been standing there? Two hours? All morning?
Was
it morning?

He heard footsteps behind the desk again. His interrogator, he supposed. But the voice that began to question him now was a new voice. Maxwell dimly realized that his first interrogator had been relieved. The second took up where the first had begun. Had no attention been paid to Maxwell’s answers?

The questions rolled on.

His voice became husky and his throat unbelievably dry. He pleaded for a drink of water. He explained that he had phlebitis and asked to be allowed to sit down. These requests were treated as if they had never been made.

The second interrogator was relieved by another, and he in turn by a fourth. The questions were barked at him, mounting in savagery of tone.

The room began to spin....

He fainted.

He was at last brought back to consciousness by violent slaps on the face, and finally pulled to his feet again.

“Before we resume,” said his examiner, “we should tell you that your daughter Edith, in another prison, is undergoing the same sort of examination that you are. She has already confessed, but they are asking for more details. They will keep at it until you also confess....”

The questioning began again. But he was not thinking now either of the questions or of his answers. He was thinking of Edith

The lights began to spin again. He was retching. There was an excruciating pain in his bladder. He was overcome with a longing to have everything over with, to learn the full extent of his punishment, to begin serving it. He sank to the floor.

“Bring me the confession,” he said. “I’ll sign it.” As he signed, he thought, Now they will let me have peace. How many hours had passed? How many days? He heard an order: “Take him to the Third Degree Room.”

The cell-like chamber to which he was now brought was much like the former one. Again they stood him before a battery of dazzling lights. Two inquisitors took part in questioning him.

“We can get the rest of this over with quickly now, Maxwell.” The voice came from the questioner on the right. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I have already confessed. They promised me that if I confessed they would tell me my punishment and let me sleep!”

“You have merely confessed your own part in this treason. Now we want to know exactly who was involved with you. Tell us the whole plot. We want the names of everybody involved in it. Who gave you your orders? To whom did you report?”

“I have signed the confession you asked me to sign,” said Maxwell. “I am willing to take my punishment. Let me go.”

The reply was several sharp blows on his face.

He was ordered to stand facing the wall, just far enough so that he could touch it at arms’ length with the longest finger of each hand. Then he was ordered to move his feet back about twelve inches, keep his heels touching the floor, and maintain his balance only with the contact of one finger of each hand.

“Now tell us. To whom did you report?”

“I’ve already confessed. I’m ready for my punishment. Send me to a concentration camp. Shoot me! But don’t force me to accuse innocent people!”

The questioning went on relentlessly. For the first few minutes his two fingers could support the leaning weight of his body. But the area around the two fingernails soon became flaming red; the area below them was yellowish-white. He tried to substitute his index fingers. He was slapped violently for doing so. His two long fingers bent more and more beneath his weight. The upper part of his arm, then his shoulders and legs began to tremble. He was drenched in sweat. His head began to swim.

“I can’t talk this way,” he gasped. “I can’t think. I can’t hear your questions. I don’t know what I’m saying!”

They let him stand straight on his feet for a few minutes and then took him again before the brilliant lights. “All right. Tell us now. There were others, weren’t there?”

“Yes. There were others.”

“Who were they?”

Maxwell did not answer. His arm was twisted until he shrieked out in pain. The questioning continued. “No generalities. We want details!”

He mentioned a couple of invented names and numbers, and was forced to admit that they were invented. He pleaded with them again: “Kill me! But don’t force me to accuse innocent people. Let me die with some vestige of self-respect!”

Tired and dulled as his mind was, he had a nauseating realization that this was precisely what they were out to destroy—his self-respect. They did not care about his body. They were torturing that only enough to torture his mind. They were even eager to keep his body alive until they had destroyed his last trace of dignity as a human being.

They forced him to stand again in the same position against the wall, resting on his finger tips until he cried out in agony.

His whole frame was quivering....

YOU’VE come to arrest us?”

The O’Gradys seemed not only resigned but relieved. “We’ll pack immediately.”

It had been Peter’s first opportunity to call on the Maxwells since his election to the Politburo. He gathered finally from this couple, with whom the Maxwells had shared the room, the appalling news that Edith and her father had been arrested in the middle of the night two weeks before.

That was all they knew. Ever since that night they had expected to be arrested themselves—for the crime of not having reported to the police the “treachery” of the Maxwells (whatever it may have been) before the police themselves suspected it. In Wonworld the guilt of any man disloyal to the state was shared not only by his family, but by anybody billeted with him who had failed to betray him in advance.

Through some oversight the O’Gradys had not yet been arrested. Peter returned to his limousine. “To Security Police Headquarters,” he ordered.

The files at Security Police Headquarters revealed nothing. They did not even record the fact that Maxwell or Edith had been arrested. The arrest, Peter concluded, could only have been ordered secretly by Bolshekov.

He told the chauffeur to drive to his father’s office. When he got there he found the secretary pale and grave.

“I’ve been trying desperately to reach you,” said Sergei. “His Supremacy has just had a stroke. The doctor is with him now.”

Peter was led into the bedroom. His father was in bed. His eyes were closed, his cheeks puffed out, his face flushed; there was froth around his lips.

The doctor was bending over him.

“How serious is it, doctor?” Peter asked.

“Very.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“In a few hours he may come out of this. But even if he does, he may remain paralyzed on his right side. I’m not sure he will have control of his tongue muscles—or, in fact, that he will be able to speak at all.”

The dreaded moment had arrived. Peter must act, and now.