Thomas M. Disch

by The Prisoner

  It was noon before the second sphere evidenced itself. This one was beige.

  “Hello there, Rover,” he called out, quickening his pace. The sphere followed at a considerate distance, sometimes shooting out on a tangent from its direct course in a sudden burst of speed, at other times describing broad loops or bouncing. Its erratic, whimsical zigzagging reminded him of a puppy at play.

  At one o’clock he chose a level of ground and pulled the cage down about him firmly. Then he opened his make-shift knapsack and took out the lunch he’d prepared–a roast beef sandwich, pickles, two deviled eggs, and a pop-top can of soda.

  Rover rolled up to the edge of the cage. Tentatively, sphere pushed at hemisphere. Joints creaked. It pressed harder, and beige skin bulged in through the squares and triangles of the lattice. He sipped his soda and watched the sphere slowly mount the mound above him and roll to the other side.

  Then, a second time, with a running start that carried it over the top and several feet into the air. It landed with the sound of a fat body unstuck from a bathtub.

  The third time it tried to climb the lattice of the cage as slowly as possible. Halfway up, miscalculating the force required, it collapsed back to the ground.

  The cage had withstood each test without any sign of weakening.

  The sphere withdrew to a normal conversational distance, and a voice said:

  “Well, Number 6, I have to give you credit. This is a splendid idea, splendidly executed.”

  He looked around, but there was no one, nothing visible but himself and the sphere amid all this green uniformity, yet ithad been the voice of Number 2, and, as the sphere shook like a bowl full of beige jelly, his laugh.

  “Haunted?” Number 2 asked.

  “Oh, another advance in technology. Where do you put the speaker, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “This whole thing is just a membrane, you know, and then, what with the miracle of transistors … I can take the volume up to something unbelievable—LIKE THIS:

  THE THING THAT GOES THE FARTHEST

  TOWARDS MAKING LIFE WORTHWHILE,

  THAT COSTS THE LEAST AND DOES THE MOST,

  IS JUST A PLEASANT SMILE …

  “But,” he went on, sniffing, much subdued, “I have to remember to adjust the audio pickup on this end when I do that. It’s much worse for me, with these earphones, than for you out there in the pasture with your picnic basket. I always seem to be interrupting your meals.”

  “It’s your most excusable fault, Number 2.”

  “May I ask you a personal question, Number 6?”

  “By all means! Let’s have no secrets betweenus !”

  “It’s about Number 127, the young lady with whom you had arranged a tryst this morning. I was wondering whatlure you used to persuade her to come to such a strange place, at such an odd hour.”

  “Ah, how is she?”

  “Thisis a fine time to show your concern! After sending her out to the meadow–and heaven knows what you’d led her to expect–as yourdecoy . She’s back, a little sadder and wiser, but none the worse for wear. In fact, I think … let me see which camera is … yes, she’s already back at her job. The restaurant should take her mind off your betrayal for a little while, but I’m certain she will never trust you again.”

  “She probably will never see me again. But if you would like to apologize to her on my behalf, I would appreciate it.”

  “I already explained to her that you were only following our instructions. That seemed to cheer her up a little.”

  “If I could have come up with any other way to divert Boy-Blue’s attention, I would never have—”

  “Yes, yes, I know: ends and means. People are only pawns in your ruthless bid for power, eh, Number 6?”

  “For freedom, rather. And far from being ruthless, I think I’ve shown great restraint.”

  “You call arson restraint?”

  “Arson? Did I leave something heating on the stove?”

  “And the wanton destruction of equipment worth … well, I won’t say how much.”

  “Boy-Blue, you mean? It didn’t show that much restraint about destroying my equipment, which is irreplaceable, after all. It was quite ready to herdme over the cliff.”

  “That was an error, however. It was on auto-pilot, and though its sensory apparatus et cetera would have sufficed in most circumstances, it was simply unaware of the drop-off. The Guardians can sense objects and discriminate shapes, even in the infrared spectrum, but theabsence of an object requires some larger degree of sophistication. It shouldn’t have charged, of course, and had I been forced to choose between you and it, I’d agree that you’re less easy to replace and therefore more valuable.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “But that doesn’t excuse your taunting the poor thing.”

  “Well, perhaps I am ruthless. I’ll tell you what–when we come to thenext cliff—”

  The beige sphere emitted a dry chuckle. “Oh, we can’t allow you to repeat your successes. Rover isn’t on auto-pilot: I’m in charge now. And our engineers are already making modifications to insure against any future repetition of such an error. But why am I tellingyou all this? Really, I’m too candid with you, Number 6. You draw me out. What is the secret of your charm? It’s unnatural of me, your jailer, to deal with you on terms approaching equality. Don’t you agree?”

  “That it’s unnatural? Quite. But unnaturalness–I thought that was the whole point of the Village.”

  “You’re being semantic again, Number 6. What I meant was quite simple, heart-warming even. I feel anaffinity for you–I have from the first. And admit it, Number 6, don’t you feel something of the same sort for me?”

  He glanced up quizzically at the huge sphere, which rolled forward a few inches across the grass, as a dog will step nearer when it is expecting to be scratched. “Well, I can say this much–nothing human is alien to me.”

  The sphere breathed a sigh, a brief hiss of gas before the puncture sealed itself. “That rather begs the question, but I won’t press the matter. As for me, I have always foundeverything human to be alien. But this is all philosophy, and though I enjoy a little philosophy just before I go to bed, it sorts ill with heroic endeavor. Have you finished your lunch? Are you ready to continue this doomed escape? I am. This is quite a holiday for me, you know. I’ve never run one of these contraptions before. The sensation can’t be described.”

  Indescribably, the sphere bounced up and down in place.

  “All right. Why don’t you back up some twenty yards or so, and I will be able to walk on much more comfortably. If you come too near, I shall have to go along at a crouch.”

  “But our conversation.”

  “Just raise your volume.”

  The sphere backed away with evident reluctance. “Here?”

  “A little farther, I think.”

  “HERE?”

  “There, and now—” He glanced at his watch (1:36 pm), strapped on the pack, and lifted the aluminum cage from the ground. Balancing the cage on his shoulders, he set off to the southeast. “—freedom or bust.”

  The sphere followed at the agreed distance. Number 2 had switched the audio to the regular Muzak tape that was constantly broadcasted over the Village PA system. Unconsciously, the sphere bobbed and his feet marched to the varying tempos of Sigmund Romberg’sDesert Song .

  3:20.

  Two horizons: the first, an ochrous line of scrub, marked the limit of the foreground, so near that he could distinguish even from here the few late blossoms on the branches of the gorse and the guelder rose; the second, above this, was a thin wavering stripe of ultramarine–a pine forest. How far ahead, or what might still lie before it, he did not stop to consider.

  He did not stop. He walked, crouched, never raising the cage more than a foot off this rougher ground, pocked with holes, dotted with boulders, intent on just the few yards directly ahead of him, careful of his own and his cage’s footing.

  The sphere, taking advanta
ge of the irregular terrain, followed him closely or moved ahead in order to deflect him toward the rockier patches of ground, ready to rush against the cage whenever the lay of the land might make it the least bit vulnerable. It need not overturn the cage to succeed; it was enough, by attrition, to disable it, to bear down on it when some dip in the earth or spine of rock prevented an equal distribution of the load. Cripples are easy prey.

  And so he did not notice when the simple green horizon behind him generated the first telltale dot, the merest whirring gnat; did not notice even the gnat grown, at ten o’clock before its zenith, to a hawk’s stature. Only when the shadow of its segmented body lay, flickering, in the dry grass ahead did he pay it any heed.

  The helicopter hovered, describing a slow conical helix that narrowed and lowered toward him with gentle persuasiveness.

  To the right the warp and wrinkle of the ground that arched up to the ocher horizon was less pronounced. The sphere, as he angled toward this smoother passage, darted ahead and planted its bulk before him. He veered left. The sphere rolled closer, pressed itself against the bars of the cage with force enough to bring them both to a stop but not so much that it would be propelled up and across the dome of the cage. It had learned the precise balance of thrust and counterthrust required to achieve equilibrium.

  Little by little, he sidled the cage about the sphere, a small gear circling about a larger. Eventually the sphere had to concede another few yards of ground, but, so long as it persisted, never much more. Again it would station itself in his path, again he would be forced to revolve the cage’s cogs about the base of the sphere. The sphere could not finally prevent his progress, but it could, and did, reduce the speed of his advance to a glacial crawl.

  The helicopter depended directly overhead, deafening. Its rotors sliced at the molecules of the air, a sword-dance above the tiny, struggling Damocles below.

  Again the sphere approached, and just as it would have pressed itself against the cage, he shifted the bars sideways. The sphere skimmed over one side, plopped into a boulder, bounced, and rolled several feet down the slope before it recovered its wits. He had gained a dozen yards meanwhile. He reversed his course, and the sphere bounded over the crown of the cage, landed with a damp smack, bounced high, and bobbed even farther down the slope. A gain, this time, of almost twenty yards.

  Growing cautious, the sphere circled some distance ahead and bore down on him slowly until again sphere and cage were locked in their abstract embrace and again he had to begin the laborsome business of revolving the cage inch by inch across the resisting grass, the gouged earth: though he made certain at regular intervals that the joints were tight, he knew the aluminum latticework could not hold out against this kind of strain.

  At 4:30 pm he was still fifty feet from the crest of the slope. It had taken an hour and ten minutes to cover 300 yards of ground (half that distance discounting the diversions and false starts that the terrain and the sphere had forced on him).

  But now Rover seemed to undergo a sudden change of heart. It sailed up the hill on a smooth arc, its great beige bulk all atremble from the unequalness of the land. It topped the ridge, dropped from sight, then rose on a high skyward bounce, a swift beige idea of a flower, fell behind the ridge, rose again, though to a lesser height, and called out in a tenor voice that rivaled the bass of the helicopter:

  “BRAVO!”

  And, on the third bounce, lower, louder:

  “MOLTO BRAVO!”

  And finally, with just one hemisphere rising over the hilltop:

  “WELL DONE, NUMBER 6! WELL DONE!”

  At the top of the hill he thought of Moses on the bank of Jordan. He stood at a brink no tortoise could ever negotiate, a drop of twenty feet to the rocky ground, not sheer but steep enough to make the cage worse than useless.

  The sphere bounced itself out, diminuendo of a Japanese drum.

  “No, no, no!” it grumbled at a sane decibel level. “Notnow , Number 19! Fly away home, and I’ll whistle when I need you. Can’t you see he’s still full ofhope ?”

  The helicopter canted left and rose to vanish at the horizon that had engendered it.

  “And now, Number 6–how do you intend to get downhere without being tipped out of that shell of yours? Eh? Eh?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “The fault extends to your left for a good mile and for longer than that on your right. Of course, youcould try and take your chances here.”

  “No, I’ll take your word instead.” He set off toward the left.

  “You mean it–you reallyare taking my word! Oh, you sly fox! Do you know what I’m going to do just for that? What nice reward? I’ll move offway down over there (oh, I keep forgetting I can’t point–there, toward those hills) and let you lower your shell by its cord and climb down after it. In perfect safety, undisturbed. Isn’t that big of me?”

  “Number 2, you’re a peach.”

  The sphere laughed uncertainly.

  “I’m waiting for my reward.”

  It bounded off, beige on tawny green, toward the pine slopes, a mile across the intervening plain.

  He lowered the cage by the nylon cord, eyeing the sphere carefully meanwhile to see whether it would swoop to the bait.

  From the distance a tiny voice called to him: “YOU HAVE MY WORD.”

  The cage settled upside-down. He threw the cord after it and scrambled down the incline at breakneck speed. At the bottom he quickly set the cage upright, safely enturtled once again.

  The sphere had not stirred. Its tiny voice called out: “READY?”

  He started off in the direction of the pines. Two miles? Three?

  “READY OR NOT!” The sphere rolled toward him, but preserved a comfortable distance, although the ground here was as uneven as it had been on the other side of the fault.

  “Not so much as a thank-you?” Number 2 asked.

  “Does the mouse thank the cat?”

  “Perhaps a very clever mouse would.”

  “Clever mice–do they taste better?”

  The sphere reproduced, highly amplified, a sound of smacking lips.

  *

  5:30 pm.

  The hills were tantalizingly near. He cursed the long midsummer day, which he had been thankful for till now. Until darkness offered him an equivalent defense, he hadn’t wanted to abandon the cage.

  Number 2, who had been mumbling something to himself for the last mile about the Lake Poets (he seemed to have it in mind to bring them to the Village for rehabilitation), suddenly stepped up his volume and gargled for his attention.

  “I hope you’re beginning to get some idea, at last, of the futility of this adventure of yours.”

  “I thought it was the other kind of attitude you wanted to encourage in me, Number 2–my idealism, my resolution, my optimism.”

  “Oh, those things are fine to talk about, and the entertainment industry would be ruined without them. But there are times one must be serious and despair. Not of everything, of course, but of these treacherous, abstract ideas. Freedom! As though we weren’t all determinists these days! Where, in this vastly overpopulated world, is there evenroom to be free? No, Number 6, though you may clang your bells for freedom, the best that you can escape to is some more camouflaged form of imprisonment than we provide, though we do try to be unobtrusive. Freedom? Perhaps there was a time long ago, a Golden Age, when men were free, but I see as little sign of that utopia in the past as in the future.”

  “So much philosophy, Number 2. It must be close to your bedtime.”

  “Philosophy? Psychology rather, or literature. My arguments aren’t based on reason but on the particular situation you find yourself in at this moment, sustaining, with ever-increasing difficulty, the illusion that you are escaping.”

  “If I can sustain the illusion long enough, it would be as good as a reality. That’s Bishop Berkeley. I should think that jailers must experience a larger degree of futility than even the most degraded prisoner. A prisoner can take
refuge in the consciousness of the injustice done him, and for him there are at leastfantasies of freedom. But the jailer is sentenced to his jail for life: he and his jail form an identity. Every one of his prisoners might escape, buthe would still be left, a jailer in a jail, the prisoner of a tautology. The very best he can hope for is to make his jail perfect–that is to say, escape-proof–but the manacles he loads with iron are locked to his own wrists. No, if it’s a question of futility, I’d rather be a prisoner any day.”

  “All that you say, Number 6, is half true. Mine is not an enviable lot. It is, indeed, futile at times, but a little futility never hurt anyone. It’s homeopathic medicine for the larger futility of Life with a capital L. However, there aresome advantages in my situation. There is pleasure in the exercise of power, and more pleasure in the exercise of more power. I can hope not only to perfect my prison–our prison, I should say–but also to fill it with more and more and more prisoners, until finally–but it would not be modest to say that.”

  “Until finally you have made the whole world a single prison.”

  “It almost makes me sound like an idealist, doesn’t it? My intention was only to demonstrate that even jailers have their dreams, and a jailer’s dreams are, in a practical sense, more realizable than a prisoner’s. The moral of that, Number 6, you may draw yourself.”

  “An offer of employment?”

  “Possibly. Your qualifications are evident: you have initiative, intelligence, experience of the world. You lack only acceptable character references, but that could be worked on. If your interest is sincere, what better moment to demonstrate it than now, you are still, putatively, escaping?”

  “Speaking of my escape–look: we’ve almost reached the woods.”

  “Yes, I was about to mention that myself. It means that I shall have topress you for a reply. You are still free to return, free to join us.”