Bang

  ‘Take the film away and destroy it,’ called the great filmmaker as the audience stumbled out and prepared over the coming hours, days and months to make meandering journeys to the Center of Disinformation. ‘Archive a broken fragment for historical purposes as usual. Destroy the rest, we have no use for it now.’ He finished, addressing Delilah directly in her eyes, eyes which fought, as they so often did, against tears, ’No use at all. It’s garbage now. Grind it up into that paste they mould the Superintendent’s gavels from. He’ll be needing a new one for that upcoming trial my best friend Poy Yack keeps talking about.’

  ‘Let me keep it,’ said Delilah. ‘Please.’

  ‘Pah,’ said the filmmaker.

  ‘When will she learn,’ asked Officer JJ Jeffrey, with one hand on the filmmaker’s shoulder and his other stealthily slipping an egg turned blue because it was out of date into the filmmaker’s viewfinder pocket, ‘to conceal her weaknesses? What use is our educating you, prisoner, if you go on to make the same mistake over and over? You have been overcharging people for popcorn, by the way, you stupid woman, and you tried spilling it, too, which is a littering offence, but these are not the reasons I’ll be coming to arrest you later. Don’t worry, I’ll do it when you’re at your most vulnerable, which is how all arrests should be made, when the villain is at their most helpless. I even arrested a man once as he lay unconscious on the operating table and System surgeons tried, unsuccessfully, to replace his hands, which he’d lost in some door-slamming accident, terrible accident, hands trapped, real carnage. I can assure you he will not resist arrest again! Nor shall you when I come for you. Authority is such a wonderful thing. I do so like being in charge. Where is your cage? You made those wheels wobble, you unsightly menace.’

  Then Delilah was back in the sanatorium.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ one of the students managed to say, ‘we’ve got you this far, by kidnapping you, now you must do the rest.’

  They sat huddled together on a bed. Disease moaned and groaned nearby. The smocked and hooded orderly looked on from a distance, caressing his ornate glass syringe, occasionally fitting. The heater pumped heat at them, back at the wax legs, whose purpose Delilah still just couldn’t figure but soon would.

  ‘The rest of what?’ she asked.

  ‘You know. Shsh.’

  ‘Know what?’ asked Delilah.

  ‘What you must do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Delilah. ‘All I know is that I must get out of here.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘And I won’t give up,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘And that’s it.’ This was all she had to say.

  ‘We’re depending on you.’

  ‘To do what?’ Delilah demanded.

  ‘To get out of here. You’re unpredictable. You can do it. You can beat the System. You can. You can. That’s why we kidnapped you.’

  ‘Why else do you think we’d poisoned the walls of 111,’ said the other weakly. ‘You couldn’t do anything in another cage. Had to keep you … oh my head … keep you out of there.’

  The other one said, ‘We made a film too. An anti-copyright film, and horribly familiar. But they’ve beaten us. We’ve given up now. You won’t. You’ve shown you won’t. We did. But you won’t. It’s up to you now. We’ve done our part, put everything in place for you. What we’ve done will get you out. Now you’re on your own.’

  Delilah, in her customarily inquisitive manner, squinting her big eyes, peered at them, their ailing faces, seeking more information. She tried pressing her hand into one of the student’s, but could glean no more from either. With a sickly lurch the bed legs gave way and the bed toppled sending the three of them crashing to the floor. Both students went taut in the face, the eyes, the throat, their red spots lining up to form two boxes on their cheeks. And while one was saying ‘about the pl– the p– ’ and the other was saying ‘you’re a l–, a l–‘ they both suffocated to death. The smocked and hooded orderly came quickly over to tick the boxes on their cheeks with a red pen.

  Delilah got up and walked away bewildered. Sleep came back for her when she lay down.

  ‘More murder,’ someone screamed in her ear, causing her eardrum to crackle. ‘Can’t help yourself, can you? If there’s a life, you take it! You’re a killer, a slayer, an assassin. Isn’t anyone safe? You knew full well those heaters work directly on the duration of the sleeper’s sleep, by reflecting heat off someone once their body has reached its specific heat capacity, which is a person who has slept too long, collapsing the bed. You also knew that they worked by reflecting heat off the total body area they detect above them, and would collapse the bed. You made the students huddle with you because you knew the bed would collapse and knew from the disease they had that a sudden jolt, a bang on the floor, would kill them. You killed by calculation. Bang went the bed, and with it came their deaths. Does your murderous wont know no bounds? Up, prisoner, up, you’re coming with me. I told you I’d be back for you.’

  ‘I’m asleep,’ mumbled Delilah, ‘go away.’

  ‘I’ve come to arrest you,’ screamed Officer JJ Jeffrey, infuriated.

  Here we go, she thought, another murder charge, trying not to inhale the officer’s egg breath, which forked from his nostrils so pungently it appeared to redden his transplanted eyes and certainly stung hers.

  ‘Get up, get up, we’ve a hearing to get you to. The Superintendent’s waiting. Have you any idea what time it is. The Superintendent is not happy with you, let me tell you, for being got out of bed at this time of night. Dreaming, apparently, the Superintendent was, of wonderful washing machines and magnificent driers. You really know how to ruin a Superintendent’s night. Or anybody’s, for that matter. Would you like a nice yellow egg? This way.’ The officer led Delilah off trying to stuff the blue out-of-date egg down her throat.

  ‘You will now face an additional charge,’ explained the ugly, grumpy, man or woman, Superintendent.

  Delilah slumped in the dock, which had to its fore a wetted wooden rail, which was new and hadn’t been there before. Wood was uncommon in the System, and this wood was smooth and porous and also wet and had a texture that reacted uncomfortably with human skin causing the person to shiver and shudder. Delilah had been instructed to grip this rail at all times while it slowly revolved, or risk being injected by the smocked and hooded orderly, who was not by his movements the same smocked orderly from earlier – but who, before coming along, in his words, for the ride, had taken fluid samples from both dead students. The rail rolled under Delilah’s hands. Shuddering and shaking horribly, she waited to hear the double-murder charge put, hoping to get this over quickly so she could get back to sleep.

  After falling asleep himself or herself, and after waking again and after looking around and blinking, and working out where he or she was, the Superintendent announced with grumpy relish, ‘Kidnap. You are to be charged with kidnap.’

  ‘Kidnap?’ asked Delilah.

  ‘That’s right, girly, kidnap.’

  ‘But I was the one kidnapped,’ she protested.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Delilah waited again, shivering on the rolling wood, while the nearby needle watched on with its sharp eye and pushed out from time to time a bobble of liquid, which after falling to the floor the smocked and hooded orderly knelt to carefully dab up and place, with his face averted, in a containing marked Highly Hazardous – Property of the Authority. Reward if Found. Alternatively, ingest swabs and report quickly to Toxicology Research 103.

  ‘And why do you think that was?’ asked the Superintendent. ‘You incurred that kidnap by your own doing entirely. Had you not made yourself such an attractive target within the confines of the System, no crime would have been incited. You are therefore by your very actions solely responsible for that crime. Such a crime cannot go unanswered. Impossible You will therefore answer it. Kidnap victims, as you inaccurately like to describe yourselves, are rarely successful at evading justice, as you w
ill learn – and are nearly always found guilty, as you most certainly will be. After all, what small fry it is for a murderer, yes a murderer, to try his or her hand at being kidnapped. For you, easy, as you have proved. Your court date, by the way, at which you will answer this charge of kidnap and the mounting murder charges, the foremost being dear Officer Gentle’s, has now shifted from an AM to PM slot because we’re having an evening party afterward to celebrate your being found guilty. Luncheon celebrations just aren’t the same. Luncheon gives me indigestion in the way that supper just doesn’t and leaves me heavy for the rest of the day. Not only that but the special waitress, a popcorn seller by trade I am told, though I cannot believe this, can only service an evening celebration, and we must absolutely have her in attendance. She is quite extraordinary, you know, and learns the facts and figures of every case and then, at functions such as the function to be held after you have lost your case and we have won ours, reels off these facts in a manner so effortless that one believes she’s been part of the prosecution team right from the off. She interacts so fully she can toss out an in-joke without apparently needing to pause to think. Thinking – now there’s a subject. I believe you discussed thinking with Officer Gentle prior to executing him. Perhaps he even asked you if you thought you could get away with his murder as he lay there in your arms dying pleading with you with his sweet and unsure eyes. You probably thought you could. It is a sad fact that he or she who thinks they can think probably cannot think, sad for people like you who will err. Such people – and this is abundantly clear to me – are unable to think sufficiently well enough to be aware, as any good thinker is, that they cannot think adequately. Such people by this shortcoming alone attain a dangerous conviction of their thoughts. You are such a person, dangerous and self-assured purely by the limitations of your thought processes. Do not think, however, prisoner, that this is an excuse for your behaviour: “I am sorry, Superintendent, but I am not to be blamed for my actions, they result from my inability to think things through.” No, this will not do. One prior legal system, you mentioned it when last in my presence, had a name for such a defence. I will not name it. I will only say, Ridiculous. I tell you this to pre-empt any similar pleas you might put before me, and to appeal to your better nature, not that you have one, to not waste our time when we reconvene at a later date. You are guilty because you have killed, not because you are stupid, which you are, as we have before established, and clearly will again. Stupidity is no defence and will not lead to acquittal, and only a killer who has not killed can be found innocent of killing, and even then it is unlikely, especially if the case has proceeded this far, as yours has. No, you will go down, further down, into the System and we will celebrate by our being attended to by the special waitress. Oh, she is so lovely. By the by, for I can see plainly the thoughts in your eyes, I have the law behind me, such as it, and am therefore, in my thoughts, right. You have nothing behind you, nothing but you life, which was nothing anyhow. While in front of you, you have an apparatus designed to offer a glimpse of how a long-term prisoner will feel in the System when awaking each morning – excruciating shivers and shudders that he or she will come to know and love, representing the endless misery rolled out before their life. Court Attendant, roll the rail, wet the wood, roll the rail!’ And the rail rolled and Delilah shuddered and shook, stamping her feet, throwing her shoulders.

  In the second gallery – another had been added, Delilah feared and assumed, for her upcoming trial – sat five people each with lapel labels indicating they were the students’ guardians. Quite how the split went Delilah didn’t know and didn’t care, but she gave them a shivery shuddery look that they could interpret as an extension of her sympathy or merely her suffering at the wet wood rail. Nonetheless the five clapped at the apparent conclusion of the hearing and walked out single-file, leaving in situ six still-steaming cups. Then a very short person rushed out calling after them in a frightened high voice, ‘Help! Don’t leave without me!’

  Next came the return of Delilah’s illness. She remembered during her kidnap that the rich student mentioned how love relied heavily on smell. Smells now overwhelmed her, as did other sensations. She couldn’t concentrate, and her head hurt when she tried. Her thoughts led her to the same location of her mind wherever they started: to an object, an object of her desires, but an object that just wasn’t there. Then her chest would ache, her tummy would turn, she’d feel a hit, a punch, quite unexpected. Next a tremendous relief. Followed by a grand despair. An unquenchable longing. Excitement, then terror. This really was quite an illness the System had concocted. She wished it would leave her, and marvelled that people hadn’t tried doing away with love long ago. Love really wasn’t so pleasant. And then she realised that this was an idea the System had put in her, and that if she went along with it she was going along with the System.

  Am I giving in, she wondered, finally?

  If they can get at my love, where can they not get?

  I’m giving in, am I, to the System?

  I am beaten. Love was all I had.

  And it wasn’t much.

  I will be found guilty. They’ve already got me. They’ve won. I’m gone. I’m done. It’s over.

  She was taken away, a limp figure, flopped, fallen.

  That’s me: kaput.

  She was dragged on her heels, a droop.

  ‘I surrender,’ she whispered.

  Nobody heard her.

  Nobody was listening.

  14 – A Headmaster

  About the pl–? You’re a l–? Delilah ran the students’ last lines over and over, wondering why nothing made sense, why her thinking wouldn’t work properly.

  ‘Mumble, mumble, ugly, keep it quiet, some of us are trying to get some kip. Oh my back! How it aches. Ow, owh, owwah.’

  Please no, thought Delilah, don’t tell me I’m upside-down again in Dormitory 100. Because if I am, I don’t what I’ll do. I just don’t.

  In her thick slumber, and against her better wishes, she sent signals to her ankle requesting information on its status. Last time she’d tried this, the pain had taken some time to reach her brain and then go back to her ankle, but when it had … For now, she didn’t open her eyes either, lest they beat her body to establishing the situation. Keep still, she thought, don’t trigger anything, play it safe, take it easy.

  ‘What are you talking about?,’ asked the voice. ‘Ankle, ankle? Thoughts, thoughts? Wakey, wakey.’

  Delilah felt the flutter of feathers across her face. Feathers? She knew now she had to open her eyes. Before she did so she heard a laugh reminiscent of the laugh of the man who’d had his arm bones broken when she’d been locked to the Panic Unit that first day in the System. The laugh’s voice confirmed this. ‘Remember me? I’m the one they put you in with that day.’ Delilah did not like the sound of that. ‘You’re right, it’s dark again, here in my cupboard. That’s why you can’t see anything, even though you’ve opened your eyes. Here we are, the two of us, just like the good old days. Did anyone tell you, while we're on the subject, that you were a mistake? That’s right, you should never have been put in with me that morning. Whoops. What a boob. Officer JJ Jeffrey – have you noticed how his mouth’s got smaller as he’s got older and he has more and more trouble cramming his eggs in there – he upset his superior that morning, a scuffle over breakfast, an argument, upturned tables, you know the story, a frightful hullabaloo. The superior instructed JJ to let you go, not because you hadn’t committed a traffic violation, but because the superior wanted to upset JJ – I call him JJ, I’ve known him so long, since before his eye accident, just before actually, moments in fact – you work it out. No don’t, actually, I’d rather you didn’t. To get his own back on the superior, JJ decided to scare you that day, hoping to frighten you into doing something silly. That’s why he came in and busted my arm bones. You thought someone else came in and did that. But no, that was JJ, wearing a different smell and a pair of Gentle’s fur boots – yuck! – and he got
away with it, didn’t he? Even though I laughed my head off, loud as I could, at that point, specifically to warn you that you had nothing, absolutely nothing, to be scared of. I wasted my breath, because, incredible, in no time you’d murdered the fat man. Or appeared to. It’s the same with all prisoners. One way or another they must be enticed to stay. Otherwise, what is the point of the System, it would have nothing to do. These aren’t my words, these are the Authority’s. The System is a fact of life. Prison always has been. Remember, prison came along long before crime, per se – lock up your enemies and all that, rather than your criminals. Now the System has to find ways to generate crime to create criminals or the System goes to the wall. Fighting for its survival, it is, always on the look-out for good crime generators. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you probably read it all in that book you got cabbaged for. Anyway, the superior in question was extremely satisfied at this point with JJ and agreed to take time out from his retirement job – he’s superintendent of the launderette on 101 – to conduct your hearing. Yes, he’s a he, not a she, in case you hadn’t worked it out yet. But ug-leee. Ugly isn’t even the word, is it? How do I know all this? I work for the CoD. Yes? No? The C of D. Got it yet? The Center. Come on, dippy, register. The Centre of Disinformation.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Delilah.

  ‘Or so I say, anyway. I might not. Maybe I did once. Maybe I don’t now. You just can’t be sure. But do you like my feather gloves, my dear? Made especially for my ulnas and radiuses. One of a kind, both of them, very exotic. From a special shop.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Delilah, attempting to sort her brain out, still not quite sure what she was thinking.