Down Station

by Simon Morden

  ‘So why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you come where I can see you?’

  ‘Knowledge is power, and I’d be a fool to give you anything. Since I’m not a fool, let me tell you the way this works: I ask you questions, and you answer them.’

  This wasn’t the geomancer. But the geomancer would be listening.

  ‘What,’ said Dalip, ‘what if I refuse?’

  ‘Then you will be beaten, starved, chained, and eventually – after a very long time – you will die. It doesn’t have to be that way. All that is required is your cooperation, and we can avoid that. You do want to avoid that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not keen on pain.’

  ‘There, that didn’t take long, did it? Sit down, and we can begin.’

  He almost did. His foot reached out for the seat, to pivot it upright.

  He pulled his leg back. ‘No. Do your worst.’

  ‘How … disappointing.’

  ‘You’ve not given me a reason to want to please you.’

  ‘Things will go badly for you. You should reconsider.’

  ‘Badly? They’re not exactly terrific at the moment.’ Dalip watched the candle flicker again. Someone else had entered the room. So let them work for it, since they were going to thrash him and he was completely defenceless.

  He spun around and kicked the candle away, out of its molten wax socket and into the dark. The flame stretched, tore, and was extinguished. He could just about remember where the chair was. He took a shuffling step towards it, and another. Something hard tapped his shin, and he crouched down, turning the chair legs so he could pick it up one-handed by its back.

  He listened very carefully. Now he’d stopped moving, there was no sound. The darkness was total. Or was it? Every time he’d looked at the candle, he’d ruined his night sight. With that distraction gone, he could make out – dimly, but there all the same – an inconstant rectangle of light. The door.

  The light occulted, right to left. Someone had walked in front of him.

  He hefted the chair as he stood, and it scraped on the floor. He stepped right, and the air rushed past him. Now he could hear and smell his attacker. He swung around, let go of the chair, and as it connected with the hidden figure, there was an audible grunt of pain.

  The chair clattered away, and he made for the door, not directly, but off to one side. His broken, melted boots crunched on the gritty floor, and running with both hands tied behind him made him step more heavily.

  He felt, rather than saw, the wall ahead, the deadness of sound and the absence of space. He slowed, turned, bounced off it with his shoulder, and squatted down again.

  ‘Enough,’ said a woman’s voice, high and imperious.

  But it wasn’t enough. The door was at the end of a short tunnel, and he rolled around the corner and headed, crab-like, for it.

  Something heavy and fast-moving tapped his skull and he went down. His ankles were lifted and pulled, and he was dragged back into the centre of the room. A light came on, high above him, up on the wall. Then another. And another. All around him, the flames seem to leap from candle to candle until he was surrounded by a soft orange glow.

  Someone took Dalip’s shoulder and turned him on his back, none too gently, either. A man, heavy-set and smelling of piss, stood close by his feet, while another, a thin man with a thin, silver-topped cane was by his head.

  The room was shaped like a drum, a perfect cylinder, except that high up were rings of open balconies, each ring illuminated by the candles. A gloved hand draped over the lowest balcony’s rail.

  ‘Enough,’ she repeated.

  Dalip was hauled to his feet and dropped on the chair. He squinted, one-eyed, up at the balcony, at the woman in the white and gold dress. She inspected him down the length of her nose.

  ‘You’re quite brave,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re not,’ he managed before the silver-tipped cane swung at his head again, a sharp tap to the back of his skull that left him with a bitten tongue and blood in his mouth. He spat on the floor and glared at the wielder. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘You’re going to be useful to me.’

  ‘You could have asked us first. We could have, I don’t know, come to some sort of deal that didn’t involve having the crap kicked out of me.’

  The man with the cane drew his arm back again, but the woman raised her hand. ‘I said, enough.’ She rested an elbow on the parapet and leaned forward. Her blonde hair was caught in a net that twinkled with jewels. ‘You don’t know what it is that I want yet.’

  ‘Information. Knowledge, your man said. We want that too. For God’s sake, we don’t even know where we are, or why.’

  ‘Is that so?’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me?’

  ‘What do you mean? None of us have any idea of what this place is or how we got here.’ He tried to get up, and was forced back down by the hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Two of you have disappeared since you came through the portal.’ She sat back. ‘And no one escapes my very talented wolves. I’ll have the truth from you, one way or another.’

  Dalip tried to stand again, was forced down again. ‘You’ve already got the truth. Torturing me won’t change that.’

  ‘Experience tells me otherwise. Take him away and make him uncomfortable, then bring in the next one. Perhaps they’ll see more sense.’

  The guard took a handful of Dalip’s hair and pulled him up and swung around, launching him in the direction of the door. Without being able to use his hands, he landed heavily on his side, and once again, his head hit something hard.

  He was reeling and half-blind, and that was before they put his hood back on. The world went dark and stuffy again. He was pulled and pushed, dragged and thrown. He tripped and fell, was kicked into walls and doors, and finally pitched head-first again to the ground.

  He lay there, waiting to be coerced into moving again, but there was nothing. A door banged shut behind him. A bolt worked into place. Footsteps faded.

  The only way to get the hood off was to drag his face along the floor, twisting his head left and right to work it free. Eventually he reached a point where he could shake it loose and cast it aside.

  He was in a tiny room, barely longer than he was tall. A slit of a window – more like a crack in the stonework – let in light and air, but not much of either. The floor was bare, and his hands were still tied.

  And he had no idea how he’d ended up there. What had the woman – the geomancer? – meant when she’d intimated that he might be lying? That he knew where he was? That was preposterous. The geomancer must be wrong, or mad, or both.

  He’d done nothing wrong. He’d never done anything wrong. From earliest memory to the moment the supervisor had called Stanislav’s name, and the two of them had appraised each other on the station platform: he’d always behaved, always acted honourably, always told the truth, always been kind. He’d been told that if he did those things, then he’d never know shame, that he’d never be the one in his father’s study or the headmaster’s office or the police interview room, staring at the door and thinking of what best to say to get out of trouble.

  And now, he was a prisoner, in a prison cell, held captive by someone who wanted him to confess to who knew what? And there could be no appeal to a higher authority, because there was none. No black-suited solicitor would sweep in, demand his release with threats and promises, and drive him back to his parents.

  It was up to him.

  And he had nothing to bring to a situation like this. Nothing he’d ever done had prepared him remotely for action. All his learning, all his good manners, all his religious devotion: could it really have left him so grossly unprepared?

  Yes. No. Perhaps.

  He could shout and scream and kick at the door until his toes broke. Or he could work out wh
y he was there, what the geomancer thought he knew, and how to escape. No doubt that kicking the door and making himself hoarse would feel better, but enough bits of him were broken already.

  There was the door, there was his foot. He took a deep breath.

  What he really wanted was his hands free. The walls were old and the stone coated with powdery grit. There were no protrusions or sharp edges to grind the bindings against, but there was the recess made by the door frame. In lieu of anything better to do, he pressed his back against the angle and started rubbing his wrists against the stone work.

  It was long, boring, and repetitive. Like simultaneous equations, but with added muscle ache. He had to stop every once in a while, just to rest and let his arms hang in a more natural position. But when he’d rested, he went right back to it.

  There were noises from outside, so far, twice. He heard Stanislav’s resonant voice echo down the walls, then fade away into the distance. He was questioning the guard, but getting no answers. Sometime later, a woman’s sobbing came and went. He couldn’t tell who it was from the sound, and the door had no grating. The shadows under the door flickered as they passed, then it was quiet again.

  He kept on rubbing. He couldn’t see if it was doing any good, neither could he feel any extra give. Eventually, if he kept it up long enough, one of the cords around his wrists would wear thin, and then he could break it. Once broken, he should be able to work out the loose end and the whole knot should unravel.

  This, he knew. He’d learnt this: a little bit of his schooling was useful after all. This was how materials behaved.

  His legs started to cramp with the tiny up-down movements he was making. As he stretched his calves, his shoulders flexed, and something snapped.

  A third person was led past. Voluble, outraged Romanian infiltrated his cell, and like before, faded away. It ended with a sharp bang – a door being closed, but nearby. If he pressed his ear against the wood, he could still hear the complaints.

  He wriggled his wrists, easing them apart, slowly unravelling the cords, pulling and relaxing, twisting and turning. Then his hands were free.

  They hurt, not just from their prolonged captivity, but from shielding himself from the kicking he’d received. He had a lump on the back of one hand that hurt exquisitely when he pressed it with his thumb, and now that normal circulation had been restored, it started to throb with every beat of his heart.

  All his fingers seemed to work, however. That was something. He squeezed his wrists and felt the deeply indented grooves in his skin made by his bindings.

  He looked around his cell again. He had a bag, and a long twisted leather thong, still tied at the loose ends but broken in the middle. He gathered up the thong and put it in the bag, which was rough hessian, like a potato sack.

  Without his turban, his comb, his sword, his bracelet, he felt naked. Four of the five symbols of his faith had been stripped from him. Part of him, the zealous part that felt the affront most, wanted to get them back, as soon as possible and at whatever cost. Only then would he be ready and fit to deal with whatever came next.

  But the other, more wary part, the whisper from a deeper teaching, was telling him that he should be patient, that he wasn’t going to offend the gurus or go against their teachings if he waited and watched and yes, learned from his captors.

  Another prisoner passed in front of his cell door. He listened carefully to see if he could tell who it was, but she was silent. She and her guard scuffed down the corridor outside. As they moved further away, there was banging and shouting – Romanian and English – but it was all in vain. A distant door opened, closed, and something heavy banged into place.

  That made five. Because Mary had escaped – or at least, because Mary was still on the run, and there was a huge difference between the two – that was it. They’d be left to stew.

  There was no bucket in with him, not even a hole in the floor that he could find. Given that he’d been casually beaten up, arbitrarily bound and blindfolded, force marched and imprisoned, he supposed that this was just the start. There was no reason why, above the simple expediency of keeping him alive long enough to answer questions, he wasn’t going to end up living night and day with his own excrement, slowly starving to death and driven mad by his incarceration.

  He wondered what would have happened, what would be happening now, if he’d literally and metaphorically thrown Mary to the wolves, and swum the river himself. He decided that he’d have found that choice impossible to live with, and that he was, if not exactly glad, content with the way things had gone. He was supposed to protect others, even at a cost to himself. That he’d never had to do it before might have made it easier: he had none of the messy practical experience to dilute his pure motive.

  But being locked up to rot wasn’t what he wanted, either. As the guard’s footsteps tracked back down the corridor, he knocked crisply on the door and said: ‘I want to see the geomancer.’

  It wasn’t quite a demand, and was far from grovelling for mercy. That might come later, of course, but he didn’t know what that might look like and he really didn’t want to.

  The footsteps had stopped. Under the door, he could see the slowly shifting shadows cast by a lit candle.

  ‘You saw her already.’

  ‘I want to see her again.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Dalip judged his words carefully. ‘Because she wants to ask me some questions.’

  Nothing about giving her the answers she might want, but yes, she did want to ask him questions. He’d misplayed the situation before. Perhaps he was doing so again, but it was perfectly clear that regular beatings eventually followed by death would be the result of his opening gambit.

  ‘Wait there,’ said the guard, then laughed at his own joke. He went away, his hiccoughing chuckles receding with the light he carried.

  Dalip invested the time in trying to climb up to the window-slit. The wall wasn’t smooth, and the rough stonework was pocked with gritty holes. That made it easy to get a little way up, and just as easy to slip down again. Because the wall was deep in shadow, he used his hands more than his eyes, reaching and feeling over his head. He was young and fit, and reasonably supple. Climbing the corner of the cell made it possible to brace himself, rather than rely on the strength in his fingers. His melted boots weren’t helping, so he took them off. He had his thick socks on underneath, and they were growing increasingly crisp with wear.

  The outer wall was broad, as deep as his arm was long. The gap was far too narrow for him to pass through, even his head, let alone his shoulders, but if he could see outside and look down at the ground, he might have some idea of what lay beyond.

  He was almost there, raised up off the floor, feet stuck in adjacent walls, and about to traverse towards the window, when there were three bangs at his cell door.

  He scrambled down and dusted himself off, quickly kicking the sack into a dark corner. He stood away from the door: he genuinely wanted to do the question and answer thing, not fight. Not this time, at least.

  Something slid aside, and the door opened outwards into the corridor. The guard was holding a lantern, a crude black iron cage, pierced with holes to let the light out. There was no point in trying to trick him by pretending he was still tied up; Dalip showed him his hands, and the guard reached for his knife.

  ‘I’ll come quietly,’ he said. That was what all the criminals in the TV shows said, and they were treated reasonably. He didn’t know if it would work here, but it was worth a shot. ‘You have my word.’

  And that, strangely, seemed to have the desired effect.

  ‘A knife in the back if you break that. Out, then.’

  It was the first time he’d seen the corridor. It was mean and narrow, just wide enough for one. There were doors all the way down, both left and right, but there was no way of being able to tell what was behind any of the
m.

  At the far end was a T-junction. The finger in his back told him he was going left, though he was able to steal a glance the other way. A bigger door, better made. That way, then, was out.

  The way he was facing was a short blank-walled corridor, with just one small door at the end to go through. There were bolts, and a bar, but they were pulled back.

  ‘Through here?’

  ‘Through there. Whatever you’re asked, you answer, right? Whatever you’re asked to do, you do it.’

  ‘I’ve got the idea. Now I have, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t you forget it. In.’

  Dalip lifted the latch, pushed, and the door swung open. It was as light inside as when he’d left it, with all the candles ringing the various balconies in the drum-shaped room.

  No chair, though. Not this time.

  The door closed behind him, and he looked up to see the woman in white and gold, seated behind the balustrade, and standing next to her, the man with the silver-tipped cane.

  ‘I never give second chances,’ she said. ‘Tell me why I should make an exception for you.’

  ‘I’m more likely to tell you the truth now, than later, when I’ll tell you whatever I think you want to hear, just so you might stop hurting me.’

  She frowned, a shadow on her pale forehead. ‘A good answer. But I have all the answers I need for now, and I’m disappointed that it was you who prevented me from taking the coloured girl. So now you have to make amends.’

  She nodded, and the man with the cane threw something at his feet. It bounced and clattered, making Dalip jump back. When it had stopped moving, he could see it was a knife, with a long blade and a short crossguard. Not a kitchen knife, but a combat knife.

  He looked down at it, but didn’t pick it up.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’

  ‘You’re not a child, are you?’ said the man. ‘Do we need a wet-nurse to flop her teat out and suckle you?’

  Dalip had done Shakespeare. He knew what those terms meant, but he wondered why the man would use them as insults.