Twenty Sixty-Four

Chapter 5

At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or thought he knew, roughly where he was in the massive building. Despite never seeing a window, he sensed slight differences in air pressure. The dingy cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level. He recalled the stale smell of the old Halifax citadel tunnels from playing there as a child. The room where he had been interrogated by O'Neill was high up near the roof. Nearby must be an executive view of the harbour for O'Neill to enjoy when done with torture. Where he was now was many feet underground, as deep down as it was possible to go. He imagined a nuclear bunker, the final refuge for top management. Or perhaps a giant data center, geothermally cooled, the core corporate AI.

The cell was bigger than most he had been in. But he hardly noticed. All he saw was a single small table directly before him, covered with green baize. Bradley was strapped to a larger table, so tightly he could not even move his head. This table was raised about twenty degrees, making his view a little lower than if he was seated.

For a long while he was alone, until the door opened and O'Neill came in.

'You asked me once,' O'Neill said, 'what was in Room 404. I told you you already knew the answer but didn't want to find out. Everyone knows it. The thing in Room 404 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something hidden beneath a towel. He set it down on the small table. Because of the position in which O'Neill was standing, Bradley could not properly see whatever it was.

'The worst thing in the world,' O'Neill continued, 'varies from person to person. It may be live burial, death by fire, by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Bradley had a better view of the equipment on the table. It was a plastic jerry-can with a handle on top for carrying it by. Although it was three or four yards away from him, he could see it was filled with brownish liquid. The guard was winding up the towel and pouring water on it.

'In your case,' said O'Neill, 'the worst thing in the world is to drown.'

A tremor of premonition, a fear of he knew not what, passed through Bradley as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the water can. But at this moment the meaning of the dampened towel suddenly sank into him. His bowels lurched inside him.

'You can't do that!' he cried out, his voice cracked and shrill. 'You can't, you can't! How do you know that? It's impossible.'

'Don't you remember,' O'Neill said, 'that moment of panic in your dreams? A wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring in your ears. Something terrible on the other side of the wall. Deep inside, you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was foul sewer water on the other side of the wall, rushing to consume you.'

'O'Neill!' Bradley pleaded, losing the effort to control his voice. 'Don't do this. I've done it all. All you've asked. What else do you want me to do?'

O'Neill gave no direct answer. When he spoke it was abstractedly, while looking thoughtfully into the distance, as though addressing an audience somewhere behind Bradley's back.

'By itself,' O'Neill said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will withstand extreme pain, right to their death. What we know now is there is something particular that is unbearable—something that cannot be faced. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a building it is not cowardly to clutch for a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to gasp for air. It's just blind instinct. As The Ronald himself has pointed out, as a technique, water-boarding is beautiful in its simplicity. You don't even need a tank. For you, this is simply something you can't withstand, even if you wanted to. You will do what is required.'

'But what do you want? What is it? How can I do it if I don't even know?'

O'Neill picked up the towel and brought it across to Bradley. He tied it carefully around Bradley's head. Bradley felt his blood singing in his ears. Already he was gagging uncontrollably at the sickly sweet tang to the dampened towel. Already, he could imagine passing out from constant retching. He felt at the bottom of a great empty pool of this brackish liquid, a flat plain devoid of sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet the can with the foul water was still five feet away from him. Bradley watched with terror as O'Neill hefted the large container.

'The fear of drowning,' O'Neill continued, still addressing his invisible audience, 'is innate. A return to the disgusting womb you struggled out of to gasp your first breath. Now here it is to reclaim you, making every breath your last. We even know why you have this deep fear, Bradley. Do you? Do you want to know? Do you want to see the squalid secret within this terror of drowing? You'll know right before—'

There was an outburst of a scream—muffled choking terror. It seemed to reach Bradley from far away before realizing it was him. O'Neill poured water over the gag as Bradley tried futilely to turn away. Although viscous and rancid, still Bradley tried to swallow it until he could resist no more and inhaled. His lungs turned inside out and he shook all over with the simultaneous effort to breathe and vomit.

O'Neill relented and partially removed the towel. Gasping, Bradley made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the table. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held tight. O'Neil brought the water nearer, less than a foot from Bradley's face.

'I've only started this treatment,' O'Neill said. 'Do you want to know how it goes? There is no reprieve, just endless drowning. At the end of it all, the secret. All the time getting closer.'

O'Neill brought the spout nearer. It was closing in. Bradley fought furiously against panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left—to think was his hope. Again the foul musty odor of the water struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human being, between himself and drowning. He was blind, helpless, mindless.

'It was a common punishment of the Spanish Inquisition,' O'Neill remarked, didactic as ever.

The terrible water was dripping down his face, into his half-gagged mouth. And then—no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment—one body he could thrust between himself and the amniotic fluid. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

'Do it to Marsha! Do it to Marsha! Not me! Marsha! It was her perverted ideas. Not mine. I don't care what you do to her. Drown her in it! Not me! Marsha! Not me!'

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the can and the fluid. He was still strapped to the table, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars—always away, away, away from the water. From the terrifying secret hidden in its black heart. He was light years distant, but O'Neill was still by his side. There was still the rough sodden fabric against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another slight thud, and knew the watering can had been returned to the felt-covered table.