He dismissed the idea of violence and remembered holidays before the Strife, when he was small. The thoughts drifted away into dream images. He slept.
Drip.
It startled him into a disoriented wakefulness. How long? A short time probably. He rose and kicked the door twice, sending metallic clangs down the corridor.
“You’ve made your point. Cut it out!”
Footsteps approached.
The cell door opened. Lowgrave said, “The computer is watching you. There’s no escape. Imagine months of this without sleep.”
Jason glared at him, speechless.
Lowgrave laughed and then relaxed with a warm smile. “I’m kidding. Like I said earlier, we don’t torture people. The CMC put a couple of things like this in the plans. It has different ideas about humans than we do. But it can’t order us to use it.”
“How the hell did this get built?”
“The design of this bunker is top secret. Few humans were involved in building these levels anyway, because you can trust robots. Have no sympathy for those the CMC planned to use this on. Unlike us, it can determine guilt rationally. Many ordinary citizens fail to understand that.”
“But the laws . . .”
“Firstly, this place has never been used until now. Thought I’d try it to show you how seriously we take Crimson Unity. Secondly, the highest law of robotics is ‘A robot may not harm humanity or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’ Under the circumstances it can justify dripping water on you for the sake of humanity.”
“On the orders of the führer.”
“Don’t compare this with irrational ideology. The computer decides the best course of action from rational analysis. You’re smart enough to understand the difference.”
“What else can it do besides this water thing?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m in a jackass mood and you have a sense of humor. You’ll laugh about it later. Come on back to your cell.”
Lowgrave escorted him to his old cell. Jason noticed that he felt a little bit like he was coming home when he went inside.
“Your anger is good if you use it against our enemies,” Lowgrave said. “If you insist on directing it toward the destruction of public order, you will be imprisoned permanently. Perhaps the CMC will even order your execution.”
Jason stared into Lowgrave’s eyes, expressing his contempt.
“Yes,” Lowgrave said. “We live under a state of emergency. Undeclared as yet, but with nuclear fallout moving toward heavily populated areas, that will change. Don’t forget it.”
“Only a tiny nuke, which your people detonated.”
“Subversive lies. And it’s not the size but the effect on how people feel that counts.”
Lowgrave left and the door clanged shut behind him.
Twenty-Five
A DARK CAVE. Torrents of rushing water pinned him against hard rock. The pressure pummeled his body. He tried to find something to grab hold of but couldn’t move his arms. Something large and hideous thrashed about in the darkness. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that it yearned to devour him.
He opened his eyes to the dimly lit concrete wall beside the cot. But water still gushed onto him and made a waterfall against the concrete. The flow tore at his saturated clothing.
They’d pulled it off somehow. Flooded the whole place. The destruction of the great computer one floor above justified sacrificing him. His friends had done what they had to do.
“Get up. C’mon. Move!”
It was the stocky jailer. Damn it. The bastard had a fire hose.
The jailer threw him a towel, tracksuit, and sneakers. “Get ready. Time to run.”
Jason dried off and changed. For whose amusement would he run? If they took potshots at him, no doubt they’d make sure to miss, because Lowgrave still seemed to value him. But he could catch a bullet fragment and bleed to death.
The elevator hauled him up through layers of reinforced concrete, past the thick depleted uranium armor, then above the surface layer of dirt. The doors parted to reveal a gray corridor. At the far end stood a massive steel door. An electric motor cranked it open, and they went through to a short corridor with doors at either end. The jailer shoved Jason out the left door and onto the sand. He found himself outside a small gray reinforced building illuminated by the glow of approaching dawn. The image of it standing alone amid great mountain peaks had appeared in the media back in the early days of the CMC government, but now the machine suppressed all such photos.
“Trying to run away is stupid and won’t work,” the jailer said. “Run. Stay close. Come back when I blow the horn.”
Jason eyed the flattest direction with the fewest rocks.
Not only real snakes hiding in the desert worried him. The snake who ruled the basement below may have left gifts to feed his sense of humor. Mostly likely in the easiest place to run. Jason decided to be less predictable.
He set off in a rougher direction, observing his surroundings with alert presence. Soon he established a good rhythm. Deep breaths of the thin mountain air, feet planting firmly on the ground with good form, picking his way around rocks and small desert plants. Cold wind blew past his face and numbed his nose. It invigorated him.
About two hundred yards out he circled around to stay close. The jailer stood atop the building like a sentry.
Jason still watched every rock and scrap of vegetation. By the time he looked back toward the building the view caught him by surprise. Behind it maybe a dozen cars stood in a parking lot. Lowgrave seemed to live in the facility, probably to avoid travel time and spend longer hours plotting and marshaling his secret force. Maybe the others went home every evening. But even Lowgrave needed transport when he left.
Beside the exit road, a great concrete retaining wall formed one side of a deep trench. The railway line ran down the middle of the depression and into the bunker three or four levels belowground.
The horn startled Jason and made him skid to a stop. He set off toward the building.
Along the corridor and down into the depths he went again. Back to the interrogation room, where Lowgrave arrived soon after.
“My men’s training is just as unpleasant,” Lowgrave said. “You feel stronger after the hose and the run. I can tell.”
“I bet you weren’t woken that way.”
“My boss put me through the same. Made me even stronger than him. He proved too weak for this job and went into involuntary retirement.”
“Does that involve six feet of earth?”
“Of course not. But given the sensitivity of this job there’s no way he can have contact with mainstream society yet. And you never will if you hold on to information about Crimson Unity.”
Lowgrave handed him a tablet with a video ready to play. “During the Strife, a gang of raiders quietly seized control of four houses. Conveniently, a park and two streets separated them from the rest of their neighborhood, so the gang had little to worry about once they herded the occupants to the basements. These were well-off people, but still middle-class. Not much wealthier than your parents. Watch.”
A man about Michael’s age sat taped to a chair. A scruffy dark-clad figure stood over him holding an electric drill. The prisoner grimaced as his torturer moved the drill slowly, deliberately toward one side of his nose, and then the victim screamed while the spinning bit went all the way through.
When the torturer turned a depraved grin at someone off camera, his face became visible.
It was Eddie.
Lowgrave said, “We know that guy is now in Crimson Unity. This is what they do. This is who they are.”
He took back the tablet and opened a facial composite app. “Give me likenesses of the people you dealt with.”
Jason gripped the tablet and gazed in silence at the screen. Crimson Unity had helped him out of two bad situations. Despite their activities, betraying them felt wrong. The video was from many years ago. Maybe Eddie had changed or Lowgrave had lied about the context. And to hell
with these goons and their dungeon.
After much fiddling and correcting, Jason created a face that vaguely reminded him of how Eddie might look if he ate too many donuts. Then he constructed one that could almost have passed as Jay’s brother, if he had one with long hair. Two pictures were enough. He didn’t know the others’ names, so they may as well not have existed at all.
Lowgrave clasped his hands together on the table. “My people found that one of our new defense nukes on that train had been rigged to blow. They had to leave in a hurry. It was meant to detonate inside this facility. Ironically your derailment caper saved us. Maybe Crimson Unity rigged the bomb, maybe an unknown group. Your gang were seeking only to keep this place defenseless for some other plan of theirs.”
“I’ve heard nothing about that.”
“In any case, if the next attack succeeds, somebody will take power. Crimson Unity or worse, because your greedy and naive friends will never get it. I aim to prevent the next attempt, and so will you if you have any sense. I’ve been chasing you around instead of dealing with traitors. My patience has worn thin.”
Lowgrave left and the jailer took Jason to his cell.
He sat on the bed, still feeling energized by the exercise and grateful for the time on the surface in the sunlight, away from the concrete walls. But Lowgrave’s words haunted him. Did he really save the CMC at those railway tracks? Who would have taken power? Maybe he had saved everybody from a worse fate.
The cell door opened to reveal a man whose face made Jason widen his eyes in recognition and awe.
Roger Wilberforce entered the cell and moved to sit on the bed at the nearest end. Jason slid over to the other end.
Jason gazed at the man in astonishment. The rumors of his disappearance due to his campaign against the CMC years earlier had proven true. Here he was in the bowels of the beast.
“Mr. Lowgrave tells me you’ve been caught up in the turmoil of the age,” Wilberforce said.
“That’s a good way to put it.”
“I see that you recognize me. I’m told your name is Jason.”
Jason shook his outstretched hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
In the last battle of his political career, Wilberforce had exuded a fierce energy during the campaign in all signatory countries to vote no to the CMC’s appointment. He followed a punishing schedule of media appearances and public speeches. But now a weariness had fallen upon him. For years after the vote he’d sometimes commented on the CMC’s policies, only to fall silent when doing that became a misdemeanor.
As Jason studied the man’s face, his initial excitement fell into sadness. The times had snowed a heavy burden on the man’s spirit.
“To be honest,” Wilberforce said, “I don’t know what to make of anything. But it seems to me that the CMC does indeed possess an extraordinary genius. The best we can do is see how things pan out in the coming years.”
“You really believe that?”
Jason examined the man’s eyes as he replied.
“Just because I abhor the methods it uses doesn’t mean they’re unnecessary. Each of us knows so little anyway. At least if we give it time, we negate the argument that we kicked it out of office too soon.”
“Could we kick it out?”
“We’d get it done if the majority agreed. Anyway, the machine would know of its unpopularity and do the math. It’d know the game was up. It even showed me a future plan for direct democracy it intends to introduce when we’ve achieved enough peace and stability. I can’t argue with that.”
“If you really think so, that’s an interesting point of view.”
“I won’t keep you. By the way, you won’t need to stay long in a cell like this down here in the Bowels.”
“That’s a good name for it. The Bowels.”
“It’s the bottom level, and the pipes on the ceiling bear a certain similarity to its nickname. Anyway, I have better rooms and so will you, I expect.”
Rooms, plural. At least they’d granted him decent accommodation.
Wilberforce rose to his feet.
“See you later,” Jason said.
“Later.”
Twenty-Six
IN THE AFTERNOON, the jailer took Jason to the interview room for another meeting with Lowgrave.
While Jason sat at the table, his towering interrogator stood opposite him and gripped the back of the chair with powerful hands, as if he were about to use it as a weapon.
“For more than a year,” Lowgrave said, “the CMC has authorized firing squads to deal with people who threaten our future. Not as a punishment so much as a guarantee that they will cause no further harm. We’ve no other way to deal with it.”
“Are there trials?” Jason asked.
“Unnecessary. The CMC was certain of their guilt. It has all the information and is unbiased.” Lowgrave leaned forward with lowered eyebrows and narrow eyes. “You’re still alive because I believe that ultimately you are a patriot, not a traitor.”
“If I don’t believe the story you told me, does it make me a traitor?”
“No, in the end it will make you a fool.”
He leaned back, folded his arms, and regarded Jason with a skeptical look.
“We shoot fools too, if they’re just as damaging as traitors.”
Lowgrave sat down and handed him the facial composite tablet again. The app was reset to a blank face.
“Your circus paintings were amusing, but I want the real faces. Why did you give me fakes?”
Jason stared back at him with a blank expression. “The faces are real. I did my best work. Just because they helped me doesn’t mean I want them to keep terrorizing us. Sure, they’d feel betrayed, but what of it?”
After some moments of silence Lowgrave slid his chair back a few inches. “Your grandparents will be informed of your execution and the reasons for it.”
“Those are the faces I remember.”
“Or I could put you in the forty-by-twenty-inch room where you stand round the clock, or use the water room to deprive you of sleep. Those people always go insane.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You said—”
Lowgrave laughed. “You’re so easy to troll. Don’t you think the water room is funny? It’ll be a great story to tell. They put me in a water torture room!” He laughed again.
Jason frowned and said, “You did build it, though.”
“Like I said, just the CMC being too logical. Or maybe it has a sense of humor after all.”
“The room exists. Nuff said.”
“No torture. If you choose the path of treachery, you’ll be shot, just like your friend Brad.”
Jason recalled Brad sitting peacefully inside the capsule covered with blood. He tried to appear unaffected by the image, but Lowgrave’s eyes bore through him.
“Lazy of you,” Lowgrave said. “Leaving him strapped in the capsule. You could have laid him out in a dignified manner. Anyway, he didn’t look so good when we raised it.”
The taunts provoked Jason to shudder visibly. His face tensed in anger. “Your thugs shot him,” he said. “They could have asked questions first.”
“Not under the circumstances. Unfortunately, misguided reasons can’t exempt people from consequences when our future is at stake. You are young and wanted to do the right thing, and Zarather used that noble motive to make you do wrong. All is forgiven if you accept that. You must convince yourself first. I expect nothing less of you.”
Lowgrave rose, opened the door, and looked back.
“It is inevitable. You’re not the type to deny the truth for long.”
As soon as Lowgrave left, Wiseman entered the room carrying two mugs of coffee. He sat down and passed one to Jason. “Milk, no sugar, like the machine said.”
Half-Bit knew how he took his coffee. Of course it did. Therefore so did the coffee machine.
Jason took a sip. It was the best, which probably meant that Lowgrave drank plenty.
“Have you been in the w
ater-drip room?” Jason asked.
Wiseman laughed. “Oh, that. Yes, just to try it. Very clever, in a psychotic kind of way.” He chuckled to himself. “Yes, the CMC is far more advanced than the systems you deal with. It had ideas, of a sort. Sometimes they were . . . ah . . . a bit off, if you know what I mean. We corrected that. I guess they left the room intact because it’s kind of funny, the computer misunderstanding humans, you know.”
Jason frowned back. “He kept me there all day.”
The smile fell from Wiseman’s face. “Did he? You mean Lowgrave? Well that’s just because he thinks you’re tough. He’s an excellent judge of what kind of training works on individuals.”
“It didn’t feel like training,” Jason replied. He gulped coffee and contemplated the idea for a moment. He had survived it, and it hadn’t been too long. He’d learned something about himself, or at least it seemed that way.
“You’ll look back on it with a rational perspective. He knows what he’s doing.” Wiseman rose from his chair. “You can take the coffee with you back to your cell. And look on the bright side! You may get to talk with the CMC itself. Few people get to do that. It’s a great opportunity for someone interested in the tech.”
Jason stood up and Wiseman motioned him out ahead of him. The scientist patted him once on the shoulder.
“It’s all right.”
Twenty-Seven
TOWARD EVENING, THE jailer brought Jason a fine suit of formal clothes and a towel, took him up one level to a decent bathroom, and told him to shower and dress.
When he left the bathroom, an immaculately dressed Lowgrave approached in the corridor and took him to a dining room with a long table. A place was set at the near end, and another adjacent to it on the long side. Lowgrave sat on the end and indicated the other place was for Jason.
The soft treatment again. Or maybe Lowgrave would get angry at some point and ram his face into a plate of food, and then joke about it. Jason would feel compelled to find it funny, as if that were the only correct response.
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