Chapter Forty-One: They Are Not Worth Our Time

Twenty-two stiffened when the door opened. With the blanket again tied over her head, she couldn’t see who it was. However, she recognized the loud, pounding steps of General Duffy, followed by the light pattering of Annhart. She rocked back and forth against her chains as her insides tightened.

“You’ll be interested to know that your crony Vasquez has been taken into custody in Berlin.”

She wondered what Vasquez would say when Duffy had him tortured. Like her, he’d have to make more things up to satisfy Duffy. Which of his enemies would he “give up” to stop the agony of torture?

He pulled the blanket off her head. “We’re leaving for Washington immediately, where you’ll give us access to your ship. Annhart is coming along. I’ll have a lot of questions for you on the way.” The woman gave her dazzling smile.

Twenty-two had worked out an elaborate story involving hidden grod bases on Mount Everest and Antarctica, advanced equipment that spied on Earth’s communications, and a country that was collaborating with the grods. She hadn’t decided yet which country or people she would name as collaborators.

The ground shook, knocking Duffy and Annhart off their feet. Twenty-two swung against the chains that held her. The support column in the middle of the room began to shake.

“What the hell?” Duffy exclaimed, looking up. The ceiling shook as if there were an earthquake. Parts of it crumbled down. The support column broke apart and fell. This went on for several minutes.

Then the entire ceiling lifted upwards. It shot up a ways, then disappeared off the side, leaving a long vertical tunnel to the surface.

Floating above the tunnel was Zero.

The ship dropped down through the vertical tunnel and came to a stop, just above the two staring humans and one relieved but anxious grod.

“How are you, Wonderful Leader?” came Zero’s voice.

“I am fine,” she said. “You may give me a long massage if you can get me out of here.”

“That is a deal, My Idol.” Zero’s door opened, and a tentacle came out. It grabbed one of the chains holding her and yanked it out of the wall, bringing down a good portion of the wall, which it grabbed and tossed aside. Twenty-two was quickly freed. The tentacle grabbed her and brought her into the ship, and the door closed.

Twenty-two wasn’t surprised to see Bruce in the ship. She knew someone had to be telling Zero what to do, and for that she was grateful. The walls were transparent from the inside so she could see out.

“Welcome aboard, Ambassador,” Bruce said. “I see Zero has a high regard for you.”

Twenty-two was embarrassed, both by Zero’s flattery—which she’d never expected anyone else to hear—and by Bruce seeing her mouth. “Zero, turn flattery mode off. Bring me the red velvo.”

“Yes, former great one.” She quickly put it on.

Despite her embarrassment, Twenty-two couldn’t help but add her squeaks of relieved laughter to Bruce’s deeper ones. She’d just been rescued from torture, and she was worrying about a flattering computer and an exposed mouth?

“Zero, they took my sensor. Do you detect it?”

“It’s in another room higher up.” A chunk of material from above came out, showering Duffy and Annhart with more dirt. Then the sensor floated out toward the ship and through the now-opened door, which closed behind it.

“What should we do with those two?” Bruce asked. “Zero could bang them together a few times with those tractor beams.”

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said. “I will have a story to tell you and Toby soon. As to them…” She looked out through the one-way transparent walls at Duffy and Annhart. Duffy stood in the middle of the room, hands on his waist. He’d been yelling the whole time, but she’d barely heard him. Annhart cowered in a corner.

“They are not worth our time,” she finally said. “Let’s go.”

* * *

They took Zero to the hotel in London that Toby and Bruce were staying at. Within minutes, the floating ship was surrounded by police, news crews, and onlookers. Zero went as close to the hotel’s entrance as possible and lowered the walkway door.

Video of the ship floating outside the hotel, and of Twenty-two and Bruce getting off it, were all over the news programs. Toby was watching them when they arrived in his room.

“Why do I have the feeling you have a very long story to tell me?” he asked.

“We both do,” Bruce said. “You’re supposed to go to a dinner tonight in Nottingham, but tell Gene to cancel. We’re not going to win England anyway. And I’m looking forward to hearing Twenty-two’s story as much as you are.”

They went out of chronological order, with Bruce telling his story first. Toby thought he should fire Bruce for disappearing like that, but knew he wouldn’t. Bruce was too valuable. He wished Bruce would at least keep him in the loop, but Bruce was Bruce. It’d be easier to walk to Grodan than get him to change.

“Does this make up for messing up with Tyler?” Bruce asked.

“About one percent,” Toby said. “You’ll be working that one off for the rest of your life and beyond.”

Toby and Bruce were stunned by Twenty-two’s story.

“And you let them go?” Bruce said of Duffy. “If I’d known what he did to you…I can think of some creative ways to use Zero’s tractor beam.”

“I wanted to do that as well,” Twenty-two said.

“What stopped you?” Toby asked. “For once, I’m in agreement with Bruce.”

“You will find this hard to believe,” Twenty-two said.

“You think so?” Bruce said. “I just rode a spaceship halfway around the world at speeds beyond imagination, then watched a tractor beam scoop out huge hunks of an underground building to dig a tunnel. I’m ready to believe just about anything.”

“If this were on Grodan, I would have killed both of them,” Twenty-two said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But here…with humans…as an ambassador…I wanted to set a good example.”

* * *

They had to lower a rope to get Duffy and Annhart out, as the underground structure was thoroughly collapsed except for the hole the alien ship had drilled. When he reached the top, Duffy released his fury on his rescuers. They scurried away and brought him a floater before he could carry out his threat of feeding them, in very small pieces, to the horned blue whale in Dover.

Duffy filled Dubois in while he and Annhart flew to Germany. Feeding Vasquez to a blue whale would be far too good for the alien collaborator, now held in a USE facility in Berlin. They’d found the spy fly in the Red Room weeks ago, but had only Toby’s rather crazed theory about who had sent it. Now they knew for sure—Vasquez had been spying for the grods.

When Duffy arrived at the USE building, he could almost smell the rat inside, a man who had betrayed all of humanity. By the time he was led in to see the manacled Vasquez, Duffy had worked himself into a frenzy.

“Mayor Vasquez, do you like pain?” the general asked.

“No, I do not,” Vasquez said calmly. “No one has told me why I am here. You will be hearing from my lawyers very soon.”

“Your lawyers?” Duffy scoffed. “You won’t be seeing any lawyers. You might not be seeing anything, if I decide to pluck your eyes out for what you’ve done.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Vasquez seemed quite calm, Duffy had to give him that. It wouldn’t last.

“You are a Grodan spy,” Duffy said.

“A what?”

Duffy smiled. They always act surprised when you first confront them. He nodded at Annhart. She stepped forward, a torture stick in one hand, a gluepen in the other, and a dazzling smile on her face.

Vasquez talked, and soon Duffy had the whole story, and a list of collaborators. When they were done, Duffy made sure nobody would ever find the body.

* * *

“What should we do about Vasquez?” Toby asked. They were on their way to Rome on the Rocinante. They had stopped in Switzerland to pick up Feodora. When she saw the horse’s head on the side of the Rocinante, and they told her that the horse was now the symbol of their party, she found that hilarious, but wouldn’t say why. She’d been quite happy to finally meet Twenty-two, but now she snored in the back in her reclined seat.

Bruce was stooped over a chessboard, playing Twenty-two. The alien stood nearby, feeding fake lettuce to Stupid and calling out her moves when needed.

“Wasn’t Vasquez the one out to get us?” Bruce said. He moved a pawn. “I moved the king’s rook pawn forward.”

Twenty-two had both eyestalks on Toby. “Move my rook forward three places.” Bruce groaned.

“Yeah, he was,” Toby said. “Duffy’s going to accuse him of being a grod spy, which is a joke. And then he’ll torture him until he tells him what he wants to hear.”

“He is guilty of a lot of stuff that he won’t be charged with,” Bruce said. “He’s a well-known gangster, and deserves whatever he gets.”

“Didn’t you recently arrange a fundraiser with this ‘well-known gangster’?” Toby asked.

“Well, yeah,” Bruce said. “Sometimes it helps in politics to know people in low places—that’s something we learned from Dubois. But Vasquez brought all this on himself. He was spying on the Red Room, hoping to find something to bring Dubois down. Only he spied for himself, not for the ‘murderous alien invaders.’”

“Murderous alien invaders?” Twenty-two said. Bruce moved his king one spot sideways and called out the move. “Move my queen forward all the way.” There was another groan from Bruce.

“Sometimes torture good.” Toby hadn’t noticed Feodora getting up. Now she stood over the chessboard.

“Feodora, do you play chess?” Twenty-two asked.

“Of course. I’m Russian.” Feodora stared intently at the chessboard for a moment, then said, “Mate in five moves.”

“I know,” Twenty-two said. “I did not want to—I think the phrase is, ‘rub it in.’”

“Ah, diplomacy,” Feodora said, shaking her head. “Chess is like war. When game is on, you don’t worry about ‘rubbing it in.’ Diplomacy come after you win.”

“But I have already won,” Twenty-two said. “He just hasn’t seen it yet.”

“I’m right here, you know!” Bruce said. “And I do see it. I’m just trying to come up with a good excuse before I concede. I’m thinking getting manhandled and electrocuted by Zero might work.”

“Were you tortured?” Feodora’s innocent question put Bruce’s possible excuse in context.

“You said that sometimes torture is good,” Toby said. “I don’t agree with that at all. It’s an atrocity, and you never get good information out of it.”

“Spoken like a true chimpanzee,” Bruce said. “Have you fallen for all the liberal propaganda on this? Of course torture sometimes works—if you know when to use it.”

“Bruce is correct,” Feodora said. “He knows theory. I know in practice.”

“But look at what happened here,” Toby said, a bit irritated. “Duffy tortured Twenty-two over and over, and all he got were a bunch of lies.”

“That’s because Duffy is a fool,” Bruce said. “People who blindly claim torture never works, and cite examples, aren’t thinking clearly. You have to differentiate between information that is immediately verifiable, and the large majority of the time when it is not. It is the latter that consistently gets bad results. Conventional means of persuasion work better in most cases, but not all.”

“Twenty-two,” Feodora said, “when General Duffy asked you how to get into your ship, you told him Zero wouldn’t let anyone in unless it scanned your life signs, correct?”

“Yes. I would have said anything to stop the pain.” The alien slowly rocked back and forth.

“If I had been torturing you, I would continue until you told me how to get onto ship immediately. If I did that, what would you have done?”

“I would have told you the password. Zero would have let you in.”

“So torture would have worked?”

“Of course.”

“You see?” Bruce said. “A person will say anything to stop the pain. But if he knows what he says can be immediately checked, he’ll usually tell the truth. That’s why torture doesn’t work in uncovering information like finding other spies. The captured spy will just turn in whoever he doesn’t like, like Twenty-two did with Vasquez. That’s why torture rarely makes sense, because you are trying to get information you don’t have, and in most cases, you can’t immediately verify it when you do get it.”

“Vasquez did not seem a nice person when I watched him on video,” Twenty-two said. “He was the first person I thought of when I had to give Duffy a name.”

“Conservatives,” Bruce said, “act like torture often works, when it only works in rare circumstances. They go with ‘end justifies the means’ thinking, ignoring ethics and basic human rights. They don’t see that slippery slope from our values down to those of the very people they would torture. Liberals are adamant that torture never works, which conveniently fits in with their moral beliefs. The reality is in between. But in general, except in an extreme emergency, the liberals are right; torture is just plain wrong.”

It all made sense, Toby had to admit. “So what do you all want to do? Make torture legal, maybe under certain circumstances?”

“You don’t make torture legal under any circumstances,” Bruce said. “If you do that, you are officially sanctioning torture as a policy, which doesn’t look too good. Once you sanction torture, then others will do it as well. I’m guessing Feodora and other generals don’t want their troops tortured if they are captured. But there are times when torture should be done, even if it’s a crime, to stop a disaster.”

“If you steal a car to rescue someone from much greater crime—like torture—no one prosecutes,” Feodora said. “But stealing car is still crime, even in Russia.”

“A lot of people thought Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional,” Bruce said. “The Supreme Court could have looked into it and ruled on it. Instead, they looked the other way. If there’s a nuke in New York City, and we catch the terrorist who knows where it is, nobody’s going to prosecute if we torture him to find the location—they’ll look the other way. And that is quickly verifiable info, so torture should work. But it still shouldn’t be legal.”

“Bruce is right that torture should never be legal,” Feodora said. “But I have simpler solution. Only do it when the nukes are about to go off, and you have bastard who planted them. And don’t get caught.”

Both Bruce and Twenty-two found that rather funny.

“How is that different than Duffy?” Toby asked. He didn’t think the torture issue was funny, especially this soon after its use on Twenty-two, even if the alien did.

“How is it different?” Feodora asked. “I only torture bad guys.”

* * *

Twenty-two agreed to go public with the torture story. Gene had arranged several media interviews in Rome. When Toby showed up with Twenty-two, they were flabbergasted and brimming with questions for the alien. Toby cut them short.

“Twenty-two has a statement to make to the press. She will not be taking questions afterwards.”

Bruce had conveniently thought to bring a smaller podium for Twenty-two to stand behind. She allowed the press to take pictures before she began.

She told the story of her captivity and torture, right up to the rescue by Bruce and Zero. It took some time.

“I am the ambassador from Grodan,” she said at the end. “I do not believe grods would torture a human ambassador.” Then she stepped back and let Bruce take over and tell the rest of the story.

Toby had done a lot of thought on the issue of torture since the discussion on the Rocinante. The whole issue was a quagmire. He now knew that, if he were president, he might actually agree to torture, but only in an extremely rare emergency where they faced disaster, and where the info needed could be checked. Of course, he realized, in any emergency case, the info needed could always be checked, since it either allowed them to end the threat—such as finding a hidden nuke—or it didn’t.

Under these circumstances, even if it were against the law, he figured most people would agree with the decision to torture. That was a good way to test any torture question, he thought: If he felt he had to keep it a secret from the world, then it probably wasn’t the right thing to do. But the circumstances were so unlikely that he might as well assume it would never happen, and not worry about it until it did.

Perhaps he’d just heed the advice of Feodora. Only do it to the bad guys whose nukes are about to go off. But he wouldn’t be saying any of this to the press.

Bruce had finished telling his story to the press, and now it was Toby’s turn to talk. He stepped to the podium and looked out over the mass of news people and flashing cameras.

“The price of a government sanctioning torture in any circumstances is too high a cost for any civilized society,” he said. “Once you set boundaries of when you can torture, those boundaries can be twisted by those who are now sanctioned to do torture. It’s a slippery slope, and we should not go down that path. President Dubois believes otherwise. Not only has his General Duffy been torturing the Grodan ambassador, but you will recall that when the Chinese protested the torture, Dubois was the one who ordered she be taken to France. Why do you think he did that?”

Dozens of hands went up. Feeling brave, Toby called on the dark suited man from the conservative World News.

“What would you do if a nuclear bomb is planted somewhere in New York City, and is going to go off in one hour, and you have the terrorist who put it there? Do you torture him or serve him milk and cookies?”

Toby smiled at the predictable question. He and Bruce had prepared for it. “I’m not going to set policy based on an incredibly unlikely situation just so you can have a headline, so my political opponents can have ammunition, and to give some terrorist justification to torture our people. Next question.”

Toby spent the next hour answering more questions. Bruce had wanted him to accuse Dubois and Duffy of torturing Vasquez as well, but they didn’t really have proof of that. Besides, as Toby pointed out, did he really want to publicly defend Vasquez? The press knew, or would quickly find out, about Vasquez’s seedy side, and Toby didn’t want to be connected to that. It wouldn’t take the press long to find out about the fund-raiser Vasquez had held for him.

Dubois quickly put out a statement that USE does not torture, that enhanced but legal methods were sufficient, that he had no knowledge of any of the events in Twenty-two’s story, and that he would launch an investigation. He also said that the alien would not be arrested, but that the alien needed to come in for questioning.

Toby knew that any investigation by Dubois would find nothing, no matter what it found. Internally, there was a chance Dubois might decide Duffy was too much of a liability, in which case the general would quietly be given early retirement, probably after the election.

The good news was the promise that Twenty-two would not be arrested. The alien preferred traveling with them in the Rocinante, but it was getting too dangerous for her. Bruce had brought up the idea of campaigning in Zero, but it wasn’t large enough. Plus, it would make Toby look like he worked for the alien, playing right into Dubois’s Stop the Invasion! ads.

Toby had another question for Twenty-two. “You mentioned there was a password that would get anybody into your ship?”

“Yes. I was close to giving it to Duffy.”

“In case this happens again, it would be helpful if we had that, so we can rescue you without having to convince Zero of the problem.”

“Your ship computer can be a bit dense,” Bruce said. “I’m wondering what a highly-intelligent being with a name like 25,257,461,522 would have as a password.” Toby was pretty sure Bruce remembered the alien’s number without using his TC.

“That is true,” Twenty-two said. “You will laugh when I tell it to you. I never thought a password was needed, so I never changed the default password. So the password, in any language understood by Zero, is “password.”

* * *

The next day, after several joint appearances in Italy, Toby and Feodora parted ways. Feodora had always been popular in Italy, where Never Surrender, the movie of her exploits in the Russia-Japan war of 2091, had been a huge hit. Now she moved on with her 30-country European blitz, using her personal floater, the Solzhenitsyn. Gene went with her, while Bruce stayed with Toby. They spent the rest of the week campaigning in Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. Twenty-two decided to spend some time with Ajala.

The following Tuesday night they met up with Feodora in Albania, the last stop on her blitz. The polls showed much of Europe too close to call. They’d get the results on the flight to Sarawak, Malaysia, their first stop for the Asian Federation election. Toby was feeling unusually tense, and every squeak, tap, and footstep bothered him. When Feodora began doing pushups and sit-ups on the floor of the Rocinante, he put in earplugs, threw a blanket over his head, and went to sleep for the flight.