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7.
Two orderlies wheeled the female prisoner down long, shadowy corridors within the bowels of West Gotha Military Hospital No. 325. The female was blond, with thick wavy hair framing a thin face that was as much shadowy as it possessed a bruised attractiveness. The two men's shoes squeaked on the clean, waxed floors, and the gurney's wheels rolled with a faint smacking of grease like chewing gum in its wheel hubs.
With pounding regularity, as they passed rain-streaked windows hemmed in by tight steel-mesh, a bluish-gray light from outside would illuminate the prisoner's battered figure with a kind of chrome, underwater light.
With similar manic predictability, enemy streakers droned in from high up, some from orbit, and exploded on the city's force shields, seeking a weak spot. The detonation following was generally soundless, felt only as a dim and distant shudder; that meant the incoming rocket had not chanced upon a momentary server-down somewhere on the invisible dome. The occasional hit that got through could devastate an entire factory or neighborhood, and the East Gotha side had been getting a similar drubbing day and night for as long as anyone could remember. Meanwhile, the force fields did not prevent rain and wind from slipping through—there were other filters to sift out chemical, biological, and radioactive weaponry. The world was so beaten down with all the poisons of war, however, that both sides had by necessity retreated to the use of still potent but cleaner weapons.
The patient was a prisoner. She had committed a crime of passion. Time and again, she saw motion-blurred images of herself astride her victim: two naked women, one astride the other and holding her hair while raising a huge kitchen carving knife. It was a scene so horrid that she always blanked it out in her mind when the knife reached the top of its arc of travel and started descending for the final lunging stab deep into pulsating red flesh awash with fresh blood.
The patient sat chained to a gurney. She wore a flimsy gown with microscopic flower patterns whose attempt to convey warmth and femininity failed amid the sour smell and rips in the worn cotton fabric. She had a grayish sheet draped over her thin, sprawled legs. The soles of her feet looked orange-dirty, and her ankles looked knobby in proportion with the starved thinness of her calves. The gurney's back was cranked up, permitting her to sit, with her wrists manacled to the dull iron rails on either side. The woman's head was slightly raised, her mouth slightly open, her eyes staring straight ahead as if in alarm. A whitish, dried trail of drool fanned out from each corner of her mouth, running into the dimple of her chin. Under her left eye was a purple, puffy bruise with green and yellow underscores.
They stopped before a door marked simply in brown, painted-over numerals, 909. While they awkwardly turned the long gurney with its huge, chipped-white wheels, one knocked.
"Come in," said a man's oddly caressing, cruel voice.
"Room 909," one of the men told the woman, if she could hear. "This is where we go in. The Inquisitor is waiting for you."
When the men were gone, the woman sat, still chained, on her gurney, in an uncomfortably large and barren office. The woman had trouble turning her head, because her neck hurt from the treatment she'd been given. She laid her head back on the cloth headrest and looked about with large eyes. Her body ached, but she was more in pain from the tightness in her muscles—the fear and anticipation of the terrible things yet to come.
"Relax," the Inquisitor said. He was a well-groomed man with a pale, soft face and cleanly shorn brown hair. He wore a tight black uniform on his lean frame, with a wide lapel flap open. "Do you smoke?"
The woman did not answer. She did not smoke, nor did she have the extra energy to tell him so. Like many things, it no longer mattered.
He left her in her sitting position, walking around her in wide, thoughtful circles while smoking an elegant machine-rolled cigarette, long light-green job with gold edges. Smoke billowed around him as he looked down at the floor, formulating thoughts. The air took on a tinge of blue from the floating smoke, and the woman lay back, ignoring the nightmare thoughts of her recent interrogation—the mild, Step One variety. The smoke reminded her of her father, long dead, and she cursed inwardly, silently, this intrusion upon her cherished memories.
"Let's just talk a bit," the Inquisitor said as if seducing her. "Look outside at the rain dribbling down the windows. Think about how this is your home, your nation, and how you want it to remain so. Would you like some water?" He paused, looking at her expectantly as if she were his client and he wanted to please her. But there was an icy, pragmatic glimmer in his eyes, as if he were looking at a piece of meat he were about to barbecue.
She realized that, yes, she was parched, and strained to croak out a reply. A glass of water appeared before her face, and she leaned forward to drink. He was surprisingly accommodating, not teasing her for it as the night questioners had. There was little sensation as the liquid dribbled into her swollen mouth and soaked down into the purple, engorged intestine that was her throat. She could not lift her chained hands, so he patiently held the glass while she drained it one grunting, effortful swallow at a time until she choked and spurted water all over her lap.
He set the glass aside. "I find it encouraging that you display such a calm, cooperative manner. I can make things easier or harder for you, depending on your understanding of the dire situation in which you find yourself. In fact, I find myself in a dire situation trying to find a certain Captain Alton Hedrock who has betrayed this country and will cause grave harm unless we locate him. He is your husband. Do you remember him?"
She nodded with a last ounce of defiance. She acknowledged the love of her life, the man to whom she had sworn herself, with a sharp snap forward that made the gurney creak and her chains clatter.
"Still loyal, are we?"
She felt drained, and sat leaning forward with her chin on her chest and her head feeling heavy.
"Get over it," he said. "Hedrock is as good as dead. So, my dear, are you unless you cooperate." He stiffened, sitting up, seeming to become larger and more elongated as he looked threateningly at her. "Where is he?" he barked.
As the sharpness of his voice echoed around the room, like a whipcrack, she suddenly slumped. Her body seemed to surrender to the inevitability of what she was about to do. Her shoulders seemed to grow smaller, and her head fell back against the grimy headrest, while her eyes gazed emptily at the ceiling.
"Where is he?" he repeated, slapping his palm softly on the desk. He leaned forward as if he wanted to suck the truth out of her marrow. His eyes looked dark and burning.
She slumped some more, letting her chin fall to her chest. Her manacled hands were clutched together. Keeping her face downcast, she raised her eyes toward him so that their whites showed while her pupils rolled upward in hate and shame. Her lips moved.
"Speak louder!" he shouted.
She told him where her husband was when she had last seen him. He sat back, clapping his hands together in delight, while she raised her palms to her eyes and began to sob.
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