The attendant went out, but he left the door open. He was back in a moment with an identical white chair which he placed on the opposite side of the table. This time he closed the door when he left.
A few minutes passed before Jan stirred and looked about, then glanced down at his hand as though aware for the first time that he was holding the cup. He raised it and sipped, then grimaced at the cold liquid. As he was pushing the cup away from him, Thurgood-Smythe entered and sat down in the chair opposite.
“Can you understand me?” he asked.
Jan frowned a second, then nodded.
Good. You have bad a shot that should pick you up a little bit. I’m afraid that you have been out of things for some time.”
Jan started to talk, but burst into a fit of coughing instead. His brother-in-law waited patiently. Jan tried again.
His voice was hoarse and unsteady.
“What day is it? Can you tell me what day it is?”
“That is not important,” Thurgood-Smythe said, dismissing the thought with a wave of his hand. “What day it is, where you are, none of this is of any relevancy. We have other things to discuss.”
“I’ll not tell you anything. Nothing at all.”
Thurgood-Smythe laughed uproariously at this, slapping his knee with gusto.
“That’s very funny,” he said. “You have been here days, weeks, months, the amount of time is unimportant as I have said. What is important is that you have told us everything that you knew. Do you understand? Every single thing that we wanted to know. This is a very sophisticated operation that we run here and we have had decades of experience. You must have heard rumors of our torture chambers — but those are rumors we start ourselves. The reality is simple efficiency. With drugs, training, electronic techniques, we simply enlisted you on our side. You were eager to tell us everything. And you did.”
Anger stirred Jan, stirring him from the lassitude that still gripped him.
“I don’t believe you, Smitty. You’re a liar. This is part of the softening up process.
“Is it? You must believe me when I tell you that it is all over. You have nothing more to say that I want to hear. You have already told us about Sara and your meeting on the Israeli submarine, your little adventure in the Highlands, at the space station. I said everything and I sincerely meant it. The people we wanted to apprehend, including Sonia Amarigho, a repulsive person named Fryer, others, have all been picked up and dealt with. A few more are still at large, thinking they enjoy freedom. Just as you thought you did. I was very happy when you were recruited, and not only for personal reasons. We have plenty of small fry to watch, but they are not important. You led us into more rarefied circles that we wanted to penetrate. And we did. Our policy is simple: we allow these little groups to form these plots to be made and carried out, we even allow a few to escape. Sometimes. So our catch will be larger later on. We always know what is happening. We never lose.”
“You’re sick, Smitty. I just realized that. Sick and rotten and all the others like you. And you lie too much. I don’t believe you.”
“It is unimportant if you believe or not. Just listen. Your pathetic rebellion will never succeed. The Israeli authorities keep us informed of their young rebels who want to change the world…”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Please. We follow each plot, help it to flourish, encourage the dissatisfied to join. Then crush it. Here, on the satellites, on the planets as well. They keep trying but they can never succeed. They are too foolish to even notice that they are not self-sufficient. The satellites will die if we cut off supplies. The planets as well. It is more than economics that has one planet mining, another manufacturing, another growing food. Each needs the other to survive. And we control the relations hip. Are you beginning to understand at last?”
Jan drew his hands down his face, felt them trembling. When he looked at the back of his hand he saw the skin was pale, that he had lost a good deal of weight. And he believed, finally believed, that Thurgood-Smythe was at last telling him the truth.
“All right, Smitty, you’ve won,” he said with utmost resignation. “You’ve taken away my memories, loyalties, my world, the woman I loved. And she didn’t even have to die to keep her secret. She had already been betrayed by her own people. So you’ve taken it all away — except my life. Take that too. Have done.”
“No,” Thurgood-Smythe said. “I won’t. I lied about that as well.”
“Don’t try to tell me you are keeping me alive for my sister’s sake?”
“No. It never mattered for an instant what she thought, had no effect on my decisions. It just helped if you believed that it did. Now I will tell you the truth. You will be kept alive because you have useful skills. We do not waste rare talents in the Scottish camps. You are going to leave Earth and you are going to a distant planet where you will work until one day, in the future, you will die. You must understand, you are just a replaceable bit of machinery to us. You have served your function here. You will be pulled out and plugged in again some other place…
“I can refuse,” Jan said angrily.
“I think not. You are not that important a bit of machinery. If you don’t work you will be destroyed. Take my advice. Do your work with resignation. Live out a happy and productive life.” Thurgood-Smythe rose. Jan looked up at him.
“Can I see Liz, anyone?”
“You are officially dead. An accident. She cried a great deal at your funeral, as did a great number of your friends. Closed coffin of course. Good-bye, Jan, we won’t be meeting again.”
He started toward the door and Jan shouted after him.
“You’re a bastard, a bastard!” Thurgood-Smythe turned about and looked down his nose at him.
“This petty insult. Is this the best you can do? No other final words?”
“I have them, Mr. Thurgood-Smythe,” Jan said in a low voice. “Should I bother telling them to you? Should I let you know how indecent the life is that you lead? You think that it will last forever. It will not. You’ll be brought down. I hope I’ll see it. And I will keep working for it. So you'd better have me killed because I am not going to change what I feel for you and your kind. And before you go — I want to thank you. For showing me what kind of world this really is, and allowing me to stand against it. You can go now.”
Jan turned about, faced away, the prisoner dismissing his jailer.
It penetrated, as nothing else had done that he had said. A flush slowly grew on Thurgood-Smythe’s skin and he started to speak. He did not. He spat in anger, slammed the door, and was gone.
In the end, Jan was the one who smiled.
Book Two - WHEELWORLD
One
The sun had set four years ago and had not risen since.
But the time would be coming soon when it would lift over the horizon again. Within a few short months it would once more sear the planet’s surface with its blue-white rays. But until that happened the endless twilight prevailed and, in that half-light, the great ears of mutated corn grew rich and full. A single crop, a sea of yellow and green that stretched to the horizon in all directions — except one. Here the field ended, bounded by a high metal fence, and beyond the fence was the desert. A wasteland of sand and gravel, a shadowless and endless plain that vanished into dimness under the twilight sky. No rain fell here and nothing grew here — in sharp contrast to the burgeoning farmland beyond. But something lived in the barren plains, a creature that found its every need in the sterile sands.