“I said, ‘Take me.’ I told you to do anything you wanted with me—torture me, rape me, kill me. I would lick your boots; I would clean your messes; I would take any humiliation. But you only smiled.”
On the table, Wallick was apparently crying. His chest rode up and down. That mucus in one eye became more watery, and the other eye, red and swollen, spilled burning drops as well. It had been years since Wallick had cried. There was an exhaustion in it, an utter letting go. My Lord recalled what the physician had said. No, he thought, not yet.
“But that was not the worst thing, what you did to his body. What was worse was what you did to his heart, to his soul. He was humiliated, you see. And that’s why I couldn’t speak, even though you didn’t gag me. Because I knew that the only thing that could make it a little better for him was to forget that I was there, to pretend I wasn’t watching. So I became silent as the grave. But I remembered. It was thirty days in all that you did this to my only son, and I remember every single one. I recorded every move you made.”
My Lord sat still for a long time. He was tired and freezing. His own cooling sweat made him shiver. He wanted to go to bed. But he wasn’t done yet. He had the worst mile still to go.
“Those thirty nights you are paying for now, Wallick. And the last, the thirty-first, will take you another eternity after this punishment is through. On the thirty-first night you must have thought my pain was dulling or maybe you had just grown tired of your little game. Because when you were done with him that night you took his life. Took it, like it were a piece of fruit you could pluck from a tree and discard with a flick of your wrist.”
This was the worst of it, the very worst: the last two minutes or so of Isaac Kobinski’s life. It had lasted so long, an eternity. Wallick, his large hand covering the boy’s nose and mouth, and Isaac… he had hardly struggled at all. His beautiful, angelic, magnificent boy, his own David—to die in such a way, in such a way! God had spared Abraham. An angel had stopped the raised knife. Who could believe such fairy tales when there had been no mercy for Isaac Kobinski?
“I have tried to imagine a punishment fit for your crimes, Wallick, but even the greatest of the artisans here, even they could not come up with anything to match them. I cried then, didn’t I? I screamed and begged.”
My Lord stopped. There was silence for a time.
“If you think back on it, Wallick, perhaps you can hear again Kobinski’s cries. I know I was only a Jew to you, and you had heard so many Jews cry. But it was personal between us, wasn’t it? Because when you were finished, you turned to look at me and there was triumph on your face. You knew you had beaten me.”
Yes, I knew. Wallick had said it many times over the years. My Lord said it for him now.
“Yes, you knew. And I’ll tell you something: I know you did many horrendous things during the war, many things. But what you did to my Isaac—that was what has damned you forever and ever, Wallick. Forever and ever and ever.”
Wallick was crying again, and My Lord was so tired. His knees were killing him in this cold, from the stiffness of sitting. He called loudly for Tevach.
16
The doctrine of Karma is one in which the whole phenomenal universe as perceived by us is understood to be an effect, corresponding to previous thoughts, speeches, and physical actions of the individual and of all living beings, which are the cause.
16.1. Forty-Sixty Calder Farris
Thick gray clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon as Pol left the dorm. This morning they were the color of pearls, which meant there might be snow. There had been air-raid sirens in the night and Pol had slept badly. In his dreams he was trying to find a certain file in the Archives that had to do with his mission—the important mission that he couldn’t remember. Upon waking, he could almost grasp it, but it slipped away again, leaving him frustrated and angry.
At the Department of Monitors, Gyde was already in. His face was ruddy from his morning trip to the gymnasium. They’d found nothing of significance in the Archives, and Gyde had been resentful about it. If there was one thing you didn’t do to an old warrior like Gyde, it was slow him down, not when there were merits to be won.
“Good day to serve the state,” Gyde greeted him coolly.
“Good day to serve the state.”
Pol turned to his desk and saw a white envelope with the official state seal propped up in the center of it like a birthday present.
“That came for you this morning.”
Pol took the envelope and tossed it aside, his fingers cold. He sat down, pulling the case files toward him.
Gyde eased onto the edge of Pol’s desk and picked up the envelope. “Department of Health. That would be notification of your annual physical.”
Pol kept his face impassive.
Gyde smiled. “How old are you, thirty-eight? Wait till you hit forty. Then they really start probing. They expect your bowels to be as fit as your biceps, and may you rest on your trophies if they’re not.”
Pol changed the subject, “Anything new on the case?”
“Well, we’re not going to the scarping Archives.”
“No,” Pol said lightly. “Sorry about that.”
Gyde rubbed his hand against the gray-blond curls of his hair, a glint in his eye. “Someone scared off our friend last night.”
“What? Where?”
“He was trying to distribute pamphlets downtown. Only got a handful out before giving up—monitors came across a bag of ’em. They must have been close to the mothered scum, made him dump and run. We should thank the gods. It would have been our heads if those pamphlets had gotten around.”
Pol eyes swept Gyde’s desk. “Where are they?”
“Lab.” Gyde’s eyes were heavy and slow on Pol’s face. Or maybe it was Pol’s imagination. He was aware of the old soldier’s almost unconscious use of such tactics to intimidate, like the occasional glint of steel in his eyes. Now Gyde draped an arm around Pol’s shoulders, fatherly. “I thought we could check out some construction sites while we wait for them.”
Pol smiled and slipped from under Gyde’s arm to pick up the envelope. He put it in a pocket. “Excellent idea, classmate. Lead on.”
The construction site was downtown, twelve blocks from Victory Square. The foreman, a Bronze 2, snapped to life when they appeared, eager to tell two distinguished Silvers anything they wanted to know.
The black paint was stored with all other construction materials in a chain mail cage that was locked at night. The foreman had never heard of any cages being broken into. Pol made a note to have Research check for incidents citywide.
But the look Gyde gave him, and his own reasoning, said they wouldn’t find anything. If no cages had been broken into, then their terrorist was making away with the paint during the day. They could see for themselves that under the watchful eyes of the supervisors an obvious interloper would be noticed. Who, then, had casual access to the materials? Only someone who worked on such a site.
“An Iron’s not going to walk off with a can of paint undetected,” Gyde said to Pol.