The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘Did you see that?’ he whispered. ‘The poor fellow has had his lower jaw removed! How long do you think he’ll live like that?’

Without hanging about for an answer, he pushed Wyvern through another door, remaining outside himself and bolting the door. Wyvern found he was alone with a nurse.

‘I must warn you that any show whatsoever of violence, or any raising of the voice in shouting or screaming will be dealt with very firmly indeed,’ she said, in the voice of one repeating a lesson. ‘Now come and have a shower. This way.’

‘I don’t need a shower,’ he said.

‘Come and have a shower,’ she said. ‘You’re filthy. Mr Parrodyce is funny about people who stink.’

The shower was nothing. True, for a few seconds Wyvern, twisting in pain against the cubicle wall, thought he was being scalded to death; but then it was over, and the cold soused him back to a grim sanity. Someone, presumably, was just getting his hand in.

‘Now you look quite a healthy pink,’ said the nurse sociably.

She shackled his hands behind his back on a pair of long-chained cuffs, and led him into another room. Wyvern noticed the walls and door were very thick; the room itself would be quite soundproof.

It was furnished with steel cupboards, a big chair like a dentist’s with gas cylinders attached, and a light table at which a plump man sat, his hands folded on the table top. His spectacles flashed as he looked up at Wyvern.

‘This is Mr Parrodyce,’ the nurse said, and left the room.

‘I’ve got to kill this devil,’ Wyvern thought. He had never felt that way about anybody before; the emotion came on a wave of revulsion that shocked him with its strength.

Yet Parrodyce had not touched him. He had merely come round the table, looked, and gone back and sat down, putting his hands back on the table top. Now he sat there, his hands trembling slightly.

And Wyvern hated him.

Also, he had suddenly realised that the power to kill might well lie within his mind. The shock of ego-union which everyone called telepathy was formidable; driven steel-tipped with hate into an unprepared brain, it should prove fatal, or at least cause insanity. And that would be nice, thought Wyvern.

‘What shall I do to you first?’ Parrodyce asked.

Suddenly, it was as if Wyvern had already suffered all this in another existence. For was this not, he asked himself, the nightmare which had afflicted every generation since the first World War: to be delivered into the hands of a merciless enemy; to feel one’s precious life at a burnt-out end; to know that all the bright things in the world were absolutely nothing against the privilege of not having to bear pain?

But Parrodyce turned his broad back and went over to a steel cabinet.

‘This is my kingdom down here,’ he said abstractedly, rummaging in a drawer. ‘I can do what I like; I am encouraged to do what I like. They are pleased when I do what I like – provided I get information for them. And I generally do get it: by advanced, clinical methods. I sometimes think I was born with a silver hypodermic in my hand.’

He laughed, and turned. There was a silver hypodermic in his hand.

Wyvern started to run round the other side of the table. A section of the floor instantly sank eighteen inches; unavoidably, he tripped into the pit so formed, and fell. He barked his shins painfully and – his hands being secured behind his back – caught his head hard on the floor. Parrodyce was upon him before his vision cleared; the needle was sliding into the sinews of his arm.

‘There!’ Parrodyce exclaimed. ‘Now get up.’

Carefully Wyvern stood up. His heart beat furiously as he searched himself for the first indication of harm the drug might produce. He was all right now, and now, but in a minute, in twenty seconds –?

‘What have you pumped into me?’ he gasped.

‘Oh – I think I will not tell you; it is better your mind should not be at rest. Get on this chair here.’

He sat in the dentist’s chair, and was secured by steel bands which clamped round his throat and ankles. Parrodyce went back to his cabinets, glancing at his wrist watch as he did so.

‘Just wait for that injection to take effect,’ he said ‘and then we’ll start the questioning and see how much of a potential mind-reader you are.’

Wyvern watched the plump man’s nonchalance, thinking, ‘He’s acting a part to me; here I am helpless, yet he finds it necessary to put up some sort of a front. Is it just to scare me?’

With the same careful nonchalance, Parrodyce flipped on a slow-moving tape of dance music, an import from Turkey. He sat with his chin in his hands, listening to someone else’s nostalgia.

‘What if it’s spring, if you’re not embraceable?

I feel no joy, joy is untraceable;

Don’t even hear the birds, hear only your parting words:

“Life goes on; no one’s Irreplaceable”.’

Like the drowsy beat of the music, giddiness swept over Wyvern in spasms. He was away from reality now, a mere ball of sensation expanding and contracting rhythmically from infinite size to a pinpoint, each heartbeat a rush to become either an atom or a universe: yet all the while the silent concrete room bellowed in his ears.

And now the Inquisitor was leaning over him. Wyvern saw him as a fish might see a corpse dangled bulge-eyed over its rippling pool. The corpse’s mouth was opening and shutting; it seemed to be saying ‘Irreplaceable’, but every syllable was followed by the gurgle in Wyvern’s tympanum: ‘Irgugregugplagugcegugagugbull, irgugreguggugplagugcegugagugbull.’

The human mind, like the body, has its strange, secret reserves. Among the madness and noise there was a split second when Wyvern was entirely in possession of himself. In that moment, he acted upon his earlier decision trap of his mind, pouring out loathing to the utmost of his strength – and was met with a counter-surge of telepathic force!

On the instant of ego-union between them, Wyvern learnt much; he knew, for instance, as unmistakably as one recognises a brother, that Parrodyce was the drunken telepath he had bumped into years ago in London; and then he dropped deep into unconsciousness.

III

Eugene Parrodyce talked rapidly.

Sweat stood out on his forehead, like grease on a bit of dirty vellum. As he spoke, he held a bitter-tasting beaker of liquid to Wyvern’s lips, letting it slop down his chin while he concentrated on what he was saying. With the sense of urgency harrying him, he had not unlocked the bands round Wyvern’s throat and ankles; but instead of standing over him, he now knelt before him.

‘Open up again, Wyvern,’ he whispered. ‘For heaven’s sake open your mind up again, and let me in. Why’re you closed down on me? You know it’s dangerous to be talking to you like this – for all I know, they’ve got secret microphones about the place, although they may be too disorganised to have thought of it yet. But H might come in. He came down here once before. If you’d only open up again for a second, we’d get everything cleared up between us – more than we’ll ever be able to do by talking.’

‘Shut up!’ Wyvern said.

The bitter liquid cleared the fire in his body.

‘Release my hands and neck, and let me sit up,’ he said.

‘You – you won’t try anything stupid, will you?’

‘Keep my ankles locked if you’re afraid I’m going to murder you.’

Abjectly, muttering apologies, Parrodyce released the chafed wrists and neck from their bands; he left ankles locked, as Wyvern had suggested. And talk burst from him again.

‘We must communicate, Wyvern! Be sensible! We’re the only ones who have this gift – this great gift. You must let me in: I’ve so much so say and explain …’

‘Shut up!’ Wyvern said. ‘I won’t open my mind to you again. I’d be sick if I did. You’re a walking cess-pit.’

‘Oh, it’s easy to insult me now, now you know my secret –’

‘Parrodyce – you had me here unconscious. Why didn’t you kill me then?’