Transition (25 page)

I expect him to smirk again, or laugh, but he doesn’t. Instead he sits back as though struck, his expression changes to that
of somebody who has just been profoundly insulted, he looks me up and down and then rises smartly to his feet, angrily shrugging
off the hand of the fat man who appears to be trying to placate him. The fat man starts to say something, sounding soothing,
but the young man interrupts him, shouting him down in what sounds like a stream of invective. The only word I can make out
is the nonsense one “Poldi.” He turns imperiously, spits at the floor under my bed and storms out, head held high.

The fat man says something plaintive to him, goes to the door and says something after him, then gives a deep sigh, shakes
his head and looks in at me, his expression regretful, hurt and disappointed. He scratches the back of his head with one chubby
hand and expels another resigned sigh. He says something inflected to be a question, I think. I am definitely not saying anything
else from this point on, and I just sit there glaring at him.

He shakes his head once more, asks another, similar-sounding question, then – when I still do not reply, but glare even more
pointedly at him – he rubs one thick-fingered hand over his bald pate and stares down at the floor, possibly at where the younger
patient spat. I doubt he will have the manners to do anything about that particular outrage. I bet I shall have to wait for
an orderly or the cleaners to clean it up. I suppose I could do it myself, but I feel the gesture was both rude and uncalled-for
and I don’t see why I should.

He mutters, staring away, as though talking to himself, and rubs his hands together, looking and sounding worried. He sighs
theatrically, shakes his head one more time, and leaves, shoulders drooped, still muttering.

He stays away this time. Filled with relief, I reach for my thin plastic cup and the watery fruit juice. As I drink it, I
notice that my hands are shaking.

The Transitionary

“Did you kill Lord Harmyle?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was ordered to.”

“By whom?”

“Madame d’Ortolan.”

“I know that not to be true. Lord Harmyle was not on your list.”

“Really? Must have misread it.”

“Please don’t affect flippancy.”

“No? Okay.”

“Now, did you—”

“Have you seen the list?”

“What?”

“Have you seen the list?”

“Not relevant. Did you have orders to kill anybody else?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Dr Seolas Plyte, Ms Pum Jésusdottir, Mr Brashley Krijk, der Graf Heurtzloft-Beiderkern, Commandante Odil Obliq and Mrs Mulverhill
the younger.”

A pause. I got the impression this was being written down as well as recorded. The circle of lights surrounded me. My questioner
was still behind me, unseen. “My information indicates that you were asked merely to forcibly transition the people you mention,
with the exception of Lord Harmyle, who, as already indicated, we know was not on your list.”

“I was given verbal orders from Madame d’Ortolan that all those on the list were to be killed, not transitioned. Quickly as
possible.”

“
Verbal
instructions?”

“Yes.”

“In a matter of such importance?”

“Yes.”

“To be confirmed in writing subsequently?”

“No. I asked specifically. Definitely not to be confirmed in writing subsequently.”

“That would be unprecedented, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“I would like to ask a question.”

Another pause. “Go ahead.”

“Who are you?” We were speaking a version of English which had separate “yous” for singular and plural; I had used the plural
version.

“We are officers of the Concern,” the calm male voice said. “What did you think?”

“Who do you answer to?”

No pause. “Were your orders delivered to you in the usual fashion?”

“Yes. A one-time mechanical micro-reader.”

“Did you question your orders?”

“Yes. As I’ve said.”

“But you still accepted them, including the unprecedented alleged instruction to kill individuals who, according to your written
orders, were only to be forcibly transitioned for their own safety.”

“Yes.”

“Had you received orders to kill so many people before?”

“No.”

“Were you aware that they were unusual orders in requiring such a… such a glut of killing?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you did not think to question them.”

“I did question them. And in the end I did not obey them.”

“You were not able to. You were captured before you could.”

“But I had—”

“Be quiet. Plus, you took it upon yourself to kill at least one more person in addition to the already significant number
you falsely claim you had been instructed to kill.”

“As I—”

“Be quiet. I take it you were aware of the seniority of the persons you claim you were instructed to elide. Save for the Mulverhill
woman, they are all on the Central Council of the Transitionary Office. Answer.”

“Of course.” (
Are
all on. An interesting choice of verb tense; inadvertently instructive, I hope.)

“And yet still you did not think to question the orders?”

“As we’ve established, I
did
question them. And I did
not
carry them out.”

“I see. Is there anything you would like to add?”

“I would like to know who you answer to. Under whose authority do you operate? I would also like to know where I am.”

A pause. “I think that concludes the preliminary part of our investigations,” the voice said. There was a hint of a question
in the tone and I got the impression that he had turned his head and was talking to somebody else, not to me. I heard another,
younger, man speak. Then the voice that had been conducting the interrogation said quietly, “No, we’ll call that stress level
zero.” The young man’s voice came again, then the older man’s once more, patient and instructive, a teacher to a pupil: “Well,
it is and it isn’t. Absolute to the level per individual, but individuals differ. So, zero. Provides headroom.” I was starting
to sweat. The man cleared his throat. “Very well,” he said.

I heard him rise from a chair and sensed him walking towards me. My heart had been beating quickly anyway. Now it started
to beat even faster. Shadows twisted on the concrete floor. I sensed the man behind me. I heard the deep, rasping, tearing
noise of thick sticky tape being unrolled. He reached over me and put the tape over my eyes and right round my head, blinding
me. I was breathing short and shallow, my heart thrashing in my chest. More tearing. He put another long line of tape round
across my mouth and, again, right round my head. I had no choice but to breathe through my nose now. I tried to calm myself,
to take fewer, deeper breaths.

Imagine that you could simply flit away, I thought. Imagine that just by thinking, you could be elsewhere.

Yes, and imagine that you are any different from any other poor, helpless, doomed wretch about to suffer, as poor, helpless,
doomed wretches have suffered across the many worlds and down the countless ages an infinitude of times. With no escape and
no choice and no hope.

A final, brief noise of a short length of tape being ripped from a roll, then torn. A very short, narrow piece of tape.

I felt him reach over me, his clothed chest pressing on my naked back and sweating head. The last thing I smelled was an antiseptic
scent from his hand. He pinched my nose with one pair of fingers, wiped my skin with a paper handkerchief and stuck the tape
over my nostrils, smoothing it down.

Now I could not breathe.

Headache. He has a headache.

He is not certain, for a few moments, which way up he is. Indeed, initially he is not entirely certain what “up” even means.

Pressure. There is pressure on one side and not on the other. This reminds him of something and he feels frightened.

He was lying on his left side. His head was on the floor, his arms lay just so, his left side was taking most of his weight,
his left leg lay here and his right ankle and foot lay on the floor too, the right knee lying supported by the left knee.

He supposes he ought to get up. He needs to get up. The people who have applied or who might apply pressure to him might be
here, might be in pursuit of him. He can’t remember why. Then, with a feeling of some astonishment, he realises that he does
not know who he is.

He is a person, a human, a man, a male, lying here on this cool floor – wood? – in darkness, with darkness beyond his eyelids.
He tells his eyes to open, and they do, with what feels like reluctance.

Still dark.

But with some light. A soft grey light, off to one side. Bars of light, a sort of grating of light, canted across the floor
some distance away.

There is a faint breeze. I can feel it on my exposed skin. I realise that I am naked.

I shift, rearranging my limbs. I am that he. He is me. I am the person who woke up but I am still not sure who he is and I
am. I feel a sense of me-ness, all the same. I am confident and sure regarding my self now; it is simply my name I am unsure
about. The same may be said for my history and memories, but that too is not that important. They will be there. They will
come back, when they need to, when they have to.

If the pressure is on this side, then applying increased pressure – reacting against that gravity, replying to it – should lift
me up.

I apply that pressure and lever myself up.

Unsteady, trembling. Breathing hard. Breathing fast and shallow, heart thrashing, bringing on a feeling of panic and a sudden
shiver. The feeling passes. I force myself to breathe more slowly and more deeply. My arm, supporting me, is still trembling.
The floor beneath my hand feels wooden and cool. The grey light spills in from the far end of a long room.

I turn my head as far as I can in both directions, then tip it up and down, then shake it. This hurts but is good. Nothing
shiny to look at my reflection in. Languages: Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and French. I know that
I know these but right now I’m not sure I could muster a word in any of them. I have never had such a rough, disorienting
transition, not even in training.

The light seems to increase. The bars of grey laid across the floor in the distance shine. They turn to silver, then a pale
gold. I cough. That hurts too.

… This is a large room.

And I feel I have been here before. Just looking at it I feel this, but the fragre of the place is familiar too. I know this
room, this space, this place. I feel that
of course
I know it. I feel that my knowing it is precisely why I am here.

I feel this, but I do not know why I feel this or what it is I am really feeling.

Ballroom.

Palace.

A sudden rush of sensation as though dry conduits throughout my body are flooded with glittering water.

The palace in Venezia, the unique city in so many worlds. And the ballroom, the great space, a map and a studied beguilement
and the sudden flash of seamy violence, leading to interrogation, a chair and a certain Madame…

I am in the Palazzo Chirezzia, overlooking the Grand Canal, in Venice. This is the ballroom: quiet, deserted, out of season
(or decaying years later or decades later or centuries later or millennia for all I know). I came here from who knows where,
as I was about to be tortured.

Did I? Could I have?

It’s the last thing I remember. I can still smell the antiseptic scent of his fingers…

I shiver again, look around. A great rectangular space. Three enormous shapes like inverted teardrops hang from the high ceiling,
covered in grey; wrapped ghosts of chandeliers. Little sign of any furniture, but what there is also appears to be wrapped
in dust sheets. The draught is on my back and legs too now. I am quite naked. I touch my mouth and nose, look at my naked
wrists. Unfettered.

Using my tongue, I feel for the hole in my gum where a tooth used to be. There is an intact tooth instead. I prise open its
hinged cap with one fingernail. It is empty.

It is empty, but it is there. The tooth remains, as though it was never extracted in the first place. Something more than
just my sense of self was carried over.

What has happened to me? I raise my head and moan and then force myself slowly up from the floor, going briefly on all fours
and then standing, staggering and swaying, unsteady.

This cannot be, I think. I must still be there, still suffocating in that chair. This is an hallucination, a waking dream,
or the self-deceiving fantasy of somebody deprived of oxygen because their mouth and nose have been taped up. This is not
possible.

I stumble to the nearest tall window and scrabble ineffectually for a while before seeing and feeling how to open the shutters.
I barely crack them, just enough to see out.

The Grand Canal stares brightly back at me, grey and cool beneath what looks like an early-morning summer’s sky. A water taxi
passes, a work-boat laden with bagged garbage creases down the waves in the opposite direction and is narrowly avoided by
a clattering vaporetto crossing from one side of the canal to the other, running lights still greasily bright in the half-dawn,
a few sleepy commuters sitting hunched on seats inside.

I bite on a knuckle until I make myself cry out with the pain of it, but I do not wake up. I shake my bitten hand and stare
out at a place where I have no right to be.

And yet I am here.

Adrian

Bint was wearing a veil. Not a Muslim-type burka veil, I mean an old-fashioned sort of black-lace-with-spots-on-it thing hanging
from a tiny little hat. Actually, the hat looked like an afterthought, only there to support the veil. The office was as big
as the reception area, lined in very fancy-looking wood panelling that had silver or some other metal inlaid into it. I’d
never seen anything like it. She sat behind a big desk. Some sort of computer screen was just sort of flattening itself out
of the way and becoming part of the surface of the desk as I went in. She stood up and said hello but didn’t offer to shake
hands.