Walking Dead (16 page)

On the second visit Doctor Trotter seemed much more intently concerned. He watched with real absorption while the subtle pattern of cheating emerged among the games below, and purred with pleasure when he spotted Mace fudging the mark where a plate had landed in the throwing game. Plantain had been reluctant, almost obstinate, about introducing any kind of cheating into the games, which seemed to have become to the Khandhars part of the ritual of their strange beliefs, but once they had agreed to do it they did it well—Foxe had not managed to spot quite how Group F were getting such good results in one of the games. Now, as he craned over the rail, he felt an odd pang of loss—not loss of scientific innocence, because the set-up in the Pit was barely concerned with science—but for the brief period then his relationship with the Khandhars had seemed to provide him with … had he ever really thought of them as animals, like his rats and monkeys? It was a measure of the power of Doctor Trotter's personality that for this moment that longing came back.

“This is progress,” murmured the deep voice in the dusk, giving the last word a strange, almost magical weight. “Now I think it is time to move your subjects to conditions of greater stress. Have you any ideas yet?”

“Yes, sir. One of the guards made a suggestion I think I can use. I want to keep to a basic game-structure, but there's no reason why we shouldn't introduce an element of physical contest. This will be modelled on cockfighting—the subjects will be led to understand that we are measuring their endurance and tolerance of pain, when in fact we will be studying what they are prepared to inflict on each other.”

“Ah.”

It was a strange sound, barely audible but full of satisfaction—not merely at the prospect of his enemies suffering pain, but at something much more complex. At the first of these meetings above the Pit Foxe had thought Doctor Trotter was driven by a muddle of motives, but now he saw that the experiment in goodness and experiment in the degradation on Foxe were parts of one structure. Why had Foxe been chosen? It had seemed a malignant whim, like love at first sight; but they say that even the victims of that passion recognise in each other submerged potentials, and so perhaps on Hog's Cay Doctor Trotter had recognised Foxe's moral neutrality—what Lisa-Anna called his emptiness. He had decided—he was his mother's son—that such a victim was necessary to his grand experiment, a spiritual sink, or sump, into which the wickedness of the people could be drained … The Khandhars were another part of the structure, because those who recognised a different “good” from Doctor Trotter's must be led to deny it by cheatings and betrayals …

“You have been listening to the tapes, Doctor Foxe?”

“Yes.”

“You find them interesting?”

“Only very occasionally. Mostly I find them disgusting.”

“Ah.”

“Disgusting” was the wrong word. In a strange way the tapes were refreshing. Foxe listened to them quite often, because he needed to learn the exact drill for the guardchange. Some of the tapes consisted of nothing but screams. Some of grunting silences interspersed with questions, some of magical mouthings. Suddenly the tension would ease and a couple of clicks would mark the space during which the machine had been turned off while the victim hid in the cave of his own darkness. Then the sounds would begin again. They were horrible, but each time Foxe left the airless, animal-smelling chamber he felt an impulse of moral energy, of fresh will to carry through what he and the Khandhars had begun.

He had one of the spell-weavers—they were the easiest to endure—on the machine when Louis came into the cell. He listened for a moment, head cocked, as his own voice said, “How long you been up the Mountain, bastard?”

“Hey, that me!” he said, delighted.

“Is it?” said Foxe, clicking the machine off. “I can never recognise my own voice on tape.”

“Yeh, sound kinda stupid, don't it? Play us some more.”

“No, I wanted to talk to you. I've been thinking about this cockfighting thing—in fact I was talking about it to the Prime Minister just now—and I think I can lay that on.”

“You can? Man, that's fine! Lot of fellas wanting to see that!”

“Well, they can't. About a dozen at the most. If we get a crowd up here it'll spoil the experiment.”

“That bad. They all wanting to see it.”

“Perhaps we might be able to lay it on later, when I see how things go. But I thought there might be a day when there weren't a lot of you on duty, for instance. I mean, if most of you had the day off, then we could put on a show for all the people who had to stay behind, d'you see? That wouldn't make too big a crowd.”

(Would he get it? Foxe had no idea how the Khandhars knew all they seemed to know about the outside world—how, for instance, they'd known Foxe's name—and the chances for private talk in the Pit were too precious to waste on that sort of inquisitiveness. They just knew, but now it would be much better if Louis thought Foxe didn't.)

“Carnival you meaning?”

“What's Carnival?”

“Next Sunday. Everybody go up San Andrea, dance in the roads, make music. Lotta masks, lotta costumes. Even the port close down for Carnival.”

“What happens here?”

“Everybody go off, 'cept the guard on duty.”

“What about you?”

“I got to be on duty.”

“OK. Well, suppose we fix some cockfighting for that night. How many people will want to see it?”

Louis began to check off numbers on his fingers. Four men on the walls, sentry at the gate, five in the guardroom, guard commander, Robbie—the one who was studying to become a lawyer—in the shed by the Pit entrance—apparently that left nine soldiers free to join the guard in the Pit. Twelve in all.

“All right,” said Foxe. “You bring them along and we'll try it out then.”

On the control panel a red light glowed and the bleeper began to sound a continuous note. Louis, who had come in to be ready for the guard-change—which was why Foxe had chosen to be there at that moment—pressed the switch to open the microphone circuit which Foxe had shut off while he listened to the tapes, did the count-down and pressed the gate-switch. The red light changed to green.

“Got to go now,” he said, “you'll make it so they fighting for real? Like cocks, uh? Plenty blood?”

“I'll try to. I'll need about four broom-handles and some cord.”

“OK.”

The red light flickered and the bleeper chirped. Eleven seconds, Foxe knew, though he couldn't time it openly with Louis in the room. Then another fifty-three seconds of silence and the green light while the relief guard came down the tunnel. The automatic brief bonhomie of changeover, and fifty-five seconds for Louis and his two companions to get back up the tunnel. Eleven seconds to get out.

7

W
aiting for the gangway to reach the sand, Foxe was suddenly pierced by a conviction that he was being inspected from above. It was not the gaze of the guards that he felt, but of the huge eye in the higher darkness, a surrogate sense, linked directly to Doctor Trotter's brain. All this had been foreseen. In half an hour it would be over, they would all be back in the Pit, except a few Khandhars chosen for detailed punishment. Foxe himself would not be punished, only now he would be a whole winding further down into the vortex. He put his hand into his pocket to still Quentin's sudden fit of energy. The creaking contraption reached the sand. Foxe scampered up.

“Better leave it down,” he said. “I'll probably have to keep running to and fro.”

Louis grunted. Without waiting for him to object Foxe walked to where the guards were gathered in their usual watching-place, a little beyond the tunnel mouth. Their faces turned eagerly to him. The rhythm of his heart hiccupped. Now I might do it, he thought—if it's going to work on one, why not on twelve? His arm seemed to lack the muscles to draw his hand from his pocket. Too late.

“Right,” he said. “I hope this is what you want. It's an experiment in joint will-power. Those are your birds, down there, with the broom-sticks strapped behind their knees. You see they can only hop—it's a very exhausting position, and I've sharpened the ends of the sticks so that they can hurt each other a bit. They score a point for their side when they knock the other man over, and three points if they drive him out of the circle. OK?”

“Sure, sure.”

“One team's green—you can see that bit of green rag tied to the back of his belt—and the other's yellow. The whole team's willing their man to win—that's the point of the experiment—and I want you to do the same. Six of you for greens, six for yellows, OK? You can bet how you like—who wins, how long the fight lasts, how many points scored—it doesn't matter—but my side of the deal won't work if you aren't rooting hard as you can for one side or the other. Right? I'll give you a couple of minutes to settle the betting while I get my notebook out of the guard cell.”

“Yeh. Saw it there,” said Louis absently, turning away at once to join in the babble of argument about the bets.

In the guard cell Foxe picked up the notebook he'd left there and crossed to the control panel.

“Robbie, that you?” he said.

“Sure. How the cockfight going?”

“Not started yet. Listen, I want to turn one of these tapes on.”

“Why the hell?”

“Part of the experiment. Increase the tension. It'll be pretty loud. Do you want me to turn your circuit off.”

“Yeh. Sure, I still studying.”

“Good luck,” said Foxe and closed the switches. He turned and saw Louis in the doorway.

“Hey, Doc, I come to ask … Hey, what you doing with the circuit?”

This time, though it would have been perfectly possible to produce the same mumbo jumbo about needing the tape-noise, Foxe's arm moved unwilled. Louis stared and their gazes seemed to lock together until Foxe's hand had risen far enough and he was looking along Quentin's spine as if along the barrel of a gun. The breath came out of his lungs in a sigh of tension, getting under the sleek fur which rose all round the crouched body in a staring halo. Louis's eyes widened and bulged. At the corner of his mouth a tic started, like a monstrous pulse, then stilled.

“You saw nothing, Louis,” whispered Foxe. “Go outside and turn round. Ask your question when I come out.”

He put Quentin back in his pocket and waited, counting a slow five, then went to the door. Louis was standing in the tunnel, expressionless.

“Hello, Louis. You want something?”

Life came flooding back as if Foxe had thrown a switch.

“Yeah, Doc. I come to ask is there going to be more 'n just the one fight?”

“Yes. We'll have a couple of the women next. I've arranged for six fights in all.”

“OK. When we starting?”

“Soon as you're ready.”

“Ready now.”

“OK. Let's go.”

Foxe walked to the gallery and called down.

“Give them the starting signal please, Mr Trotter.”

Shadowless, insect-like in their movements, Ginger and Vine hopped into the circle. Their bare chests glistened already with the sweat of the crouch to which the broomsticks constrained them. Each man had his ankles tied together, and his wrists lashed in front of his ankles, with the broomstick, sharpened at each end, thrust through the gap behind his knees and in front of his elbows. A hop was the only possible gait; fall, and you had to be helped back to your feet.

The cheering began, whoops and shouts from the guards, and from the two groups of Khandhars a strange noise, an indrawn gasp—almost a gulp—of air with a vibration in the throat. The individual pulses of breath sounded like something percussive, a loose-skinned drum perhaps. Each group made its noise in unison, slowing and speeding the beats in response to the rhythm of the fight but out of time with the other group. The effect was hypnotic but far from somnolent, and much more expressive of sustained fierce effort than the more orthodox crowd-noises from the gallery.

Without feint or warning the circling ended as Vine and Ginger leaped at each other and clashed. For a second they were still, necks strained at each other's shoulders, and then they were toppling apart. As they fell Vine twisted violently so that the pointed end of his stick raked across Ginger's torso. The beads of blood welled on the blue-black skin, glittery under the arc-lights, then joined in runnels like a ragged comb as Ginger's handlers pulled him to his feet and set him opposite Vine. The Khandhars' chant slowed to a mutter, and the yells of the guards, which had doubled at the fall, dwindled as if in sympathy. A bet was settled without argument.

“Fight on,” said Mr Trotter, strutting at the edge of the ring, stopwatch in hand.

Since the fight had begun Foxe had been conscious that his body was trembling all over, his elbows pressing at his ribs and his knees clenched to each other, as if his whole being was trying to cringe away into an inner self. He was in a sort of trance, hypnotised half by the fight and half by the consciousness of Louis standing beside him, inside whose mind, flimsily buried, lurked the fatal bit of memory of what had just happened in the guard-cell. How long would it stay buried? Foxe remembered what the President had done to Andy. He remembered Captain Angiah's story about the sentry whose mind stayed blank even in front of the firing squad, but they were like dreams, things that couldn't have any mass in the waking world.

A crash of yells burst from the gallery, a mixture of rage and laughter. Down in the Pit Ginger had managed to upset Vine and instead of backing off was trying to nudge him out of the ring with his knees. Mr Trotter said something inaudible, and Ginger's handlers stepped out and pulled him off. His chest was more red than black, and there was a smaller but fast-flowing wound below Vine's left ear. Once more the fight began, the gulping chant fluttered round the Pit and the guards' yells rang out from above. Both combatants were tiring now, oily with sweat and blood, smeared with sand and gasping like stranded fish, but they came at each other as though that were all that mattered in the world. Ginger wheeled round as Vine came in, but Vine avoided the slash of the broomstick and bowled him over with his charge. Mr Trotter held up his hand. Plantain rattled two of the tin plates against each other, and Vine too collapsed, chest heaving. Their handlers untied them and stood them up. Cocoa Bean took their pulse and spoke to Mr Trotter, who made a couple of notes. The fighters blew into plastic bags, with Mr Trotter counting the breaths they needed to blow them tight. Cocoa Bean inspected their wounds and led them, leaning in apparent total exhaustion on their handlers' shoulders, away to where the surgical dressings were laid out on the table, in its usual place along to the left near the foot of the gangway. The guards sorted out their finances.

“Great fight, Doc,” said Louis, grinning.

“Glad it was what you wanted,” said Foxe politely.

“They do sure go at the other fellow. You think the girls fight as tough?”

“We'll have to see,” said Foxe. “They're using that smaller circle over there.”

Down below the Khandhars shifted position, now taking station round the ring which Foxe had drawn over to the right. The watching guards slouched along the gallery for a better view, but naturally didn't go the whole way, halting to watch at an angle which focused their attention away from the gangway. The two women, Hibiscus and Lettuce, crouched at the edge of the ring. Foxe didn't dare look anywhere else, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the handlers of the previous fight come quietly back to join their groups. Mr Trotter gave the signal and the women hopped into the ring. The same chant from below, the same yells from above, filled the cavern.

It hadn't been possible to choose the women for their physical attractions; starvation slims nobody to cover-girl shapes. Their thin and wrinkled breasts flopped with each hop, their lank hair clothed their shoulders, and their ribs stuck out all down their straining sides. They clashed, toppled, were righted and leaped at each other again.

“Hey, Doc! She biting! That right?”

“Oh yes, I think so,” said Foxe in a detached voice. He let his glance flicker across the arena to the table. There was no one there, but a movement on the gangway. He counted five and tapped Louis on the shoulder. Impatiently the big guard turned. Foxe already had Quentin poised between their two faces, and as soon as the eyes, glimmering in the upshot light, met his he sighed out a slow breath, this time barely ruffling the rat's fur. Louis froze, glaring with blind eyes at Foxe, who reached out with his free hand and gently eased the gun from where it was slung on Louis' shoulder.

“Stay still,” whispered Foxe. “See nothing.”

He passed the gun behind him without looking round. A hand took it. One.

The next man, apparently sensing the stillness on his left, turned almost before Foxe was ready, but Foxe caught his eye, blew and froze him with the look of surprise and query stiffened on to his face. Two. The third man was leaning right over the rail, gesticulating at the fight below and wouldn't take any notice of Foxe's polite tap for attention. Impatient and panicky Foxe snatched at his arm and spun him round into the gust of breath. Wrong technique. The man almost shouted, looked over Foxe's shoulder, back at Foxe and was caught. Three.

As the fourth man froze unresisting the women below toppled from their clinch and all along the gallery the strained attention on the scene below lost focus. Someone yelled inarticulately. A shot swamped the yell. Foxe flung himself flat on the boards and covered the back of his neck with his hands thinking Not enough—Not enough—Angle too fine—Men this end screen rest. The noise was like pain. He couldn't tell how many guns were firing. A large, soft weight slid slowly across his spine and stayed there, and then another, more sudden and stunning, collapsed on his head, muffling the last stammer of firing. A bare foot kicked his wrist. That's one of us, he thought. One of us still alive. His ears rang with the whining remains of deafness and his heart slammed and pounded. At last he took a half-stifled breath and tried to rise, but at the movement the man who was pinning down his head quivered and groaned. Appalled with the shock of it, Foxe's body went rigid, and before he could force his muscles into another effort he felt the body on his back being hauled slithering away, and then the man on his head was lifted clear.

“That one's still alive,” he gasped. A single shot banged, very close.

“Not now,” said someone.

Foxe forced himself to hands and knees, crawled to the edge of the gallery and vomited over it.

“You hurt, Doc?” said someone.

“Don't think so,” he gasped, and retched again.

As his head cleared he saw that the Pit was almost empty. Hibiscus was lying panting in the fighting-circle, still lashed into her crouch, and Cactus was bending over Lettuce to untie her ankles. A little further off lay Mr Trotter, face down, spreadeagled. Directly below Foxe scarlet blotches appeared and spread on the sand, where thin streams of blood trickled between the boards of the gallery, breaking into drops before they reached the bottom.

“Vine, he's dead,” said a calm voice.

“How be Cocoa?” said another—Plantain.

“Bleeding bad. Cut across the scalp. Bone feel OK and she breathing steady.”

“Fetch her some bandage from that table. Anybody found Sonny?”

“He here,” said a voice further down the gallery. “I think he dead too. Yeh.”

Foxe got to his feet and stood, gripping the gallery rail and shaking his head in a stupid way. Sonny was one of the guards, surely, a quiet, smiling man with a flat face like an orang's.

Down below, moving very slowly limb by limb, like a dreamer easing out of the rigidity of nightmare, Mr Trotter rose to his knees and looked around.

“How long we got?” said Plantain. It was strange to be able to discuss plans thus openly.

“About twenty minutes, I think,” said Foxe. “I said six fights, say five minutes each. We've had two of them. I know which switches to press and what to say, but I don't think I can do Louis's voice well enough to fool Robbie.”

“Uh. Yeah. Maize do that. You tell him what to say.”

“OK. I don't know much about what happens beyond the gates. There'll be Andy in the shed there, and four men manning the machine-guns on the castle walls, and about half a dozen in the guard room and a guard commander, Louis said. Oh, yes, and a sentry at the castle gate—outside, I think.”

“Hey, Doc,” called a voice. Foxe looked round. The dead guards sprawled along the gallery, two or three still dangling half across the
rail. Several of the Khandhars crouched among them, stripping off weapons and uniforms. One man was already easing his legs into a pair of trousers, and others were standing examining their guns, their poses confident and calm.