10

They bound his hands again. After a while, they brought him back into the interrogation room, unless it was a different room. Curious, he tried to look to see if there was blood on the floor that had leaked out of the man’s head but either this was a different room or they had cleaned the blood up. Then more questions, from several people this time, back and forth, none of them giving him a chance to do much. Where was the voice? Now that it had a shadow body, had it simply walked off? In any case, he couldn’t hear it. He kept listening for it but couldn’t hear it, but it was so hard sometimes to hear the inside voices when there were so many outside voices talking.

Whatever he was saying to answer the questions didn’t seem to be satisfying them; they kept on asking him the same questions again and again as if he had another answer to give to them. So, he stopped answering. This didn’t seem to help any, though: they still kept on asking, and now they started acting like his body might have the answers as well. They kept yanking on his hair or pushing his head down or pushing his head up or edging him out of the chair. When he hit the ground he lay there, wondering if the inside voice would come back. But nothing happened. They were right there, all around them, but it felt to him like they were moving farther and farther away, like he was burrowing deeper and deeper into his own body where they couldn’t get at him.

After a while, they took him away, down a hall and to a cell, and locked him in. Once he was alone, he felt himself slowly beginning to fill up his body again, until the things around him felt like they were real and there again. His body, he realized, hurt a lot, ached all over. There were bruises on his arms and legs where they had hit him, and probably bruises on his face, too, though there was no mirror or anything reflective he could use to examine it. There was the taste of blood in his mouth and he seemed to be missing a tooth.

He groaned a little, pulled himself onto the narrow cot and lay there. How had this happened to him? Why were things always happening to him in ways that he had a hard time understanding? Was it the same thing for everybody or just for him? He thought back to Jensi—Jensi always seemed to understand the world around him more clearly. Why would that be the case? What’s wrong with me? wondered Istvan again.

After a while he fell asleep.

*   *   *

He awoke to the sound of someone groaning. It took him a while to realize that it was him. His body hurt all over, and was stiff now. He sat up slowly holding his head. When he looked up, it was to see the gray man.

“You,” said Istvan.

“Me,” said the gray man.

“Are you real?” asked Istvan.

A flicker of amusement passed over the man’s face. “We decided earlier I was,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

Istvan thought for a moment, then nodded. “But maybe I was wrong,” he said.

“Does it really matter if you were right or wrong?” asked the man. “Who else is there to talk to?”

“What do you want to talk about?” asked Istvan.

“You know what I want to talk about,” said the gray man. “Who told you to do what you did?”

Istvan just stared at him, then shook his head. “I’ve tried to explain it,” he said. “I can’t.”

“You won’t, you mean,” said the man.

“No,” said Istvan. “Can’t. I don’t know why.”

The man stared at him thoughtfully. “You really believe that, don’t you?” he said. Once Istvan nodded, he continued: “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter what you believe,” he said patiently. “The information is there. We’re going to get to it. Even if we have to break your skull open and filter it out bit by bit. And in the process, we’ll make sure that you never are able to do anything like what you did again.” He smiled. “We have a reputation for being very thorough. It is not an undeserved reputation.”

Istvan had an impulse to stand up and fall on the gray man, but he suppressed it. He was afraid that the same thing would happen that happened before, that the gray man would fold up again, into a gray box, and then unfold into someone or something else. He did not want to see that happen again. So he stayed there, waiting, part of him hoping the gray man would go away, part of him hoping he would say something else that would help him to understand better the situation he was in.

But when the gray man did not speak, Istvan finally cleared his throat. “What will happen to me next?” he asked.

“Normally you would go back into an interrogation room a few more times,” said the gray man. “Maybe a dozen times, maybe two. But what you did to my colleague has sped the process up a bit.”

“Your colleague?”

“The man you strangled,” he said. “Or rather, started to strangle and then cracked his skull.” He shook his finger at Istvan. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

“But he told me to do it,” said Istvan, and then noticed the gray man was staring at him with delicately poised attention.

“Who told you?” he asked.

Istvan raised a hand and let it fall helplessly. Who had told him? At the time it seemed so clear, but now it seemed so confused. A man that was not a man, a figure made of smoke, a voice that perhaps was there, perhaps not. How was he to explain that? Particularly to a man whose skin looked wrong?

“I didn’t mean to,” he finally said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said the gray man.

“I didn’t?”

The gray man smiled, shook his head. “No,” he said. “You didn’t.” He sighed and rose from his chair, pushing up with his hands on his knees. “No matter,” he said. “We’ll have you for a long time. I don’t need the answer today.”

The gray man started to move toward the door, then turned back. “You asked what would happen to you,” he said. “Next step, since you sped things up by murdering a man who was just trying to do his job, is for you to be taken off planet to a secure location, a place not subject to the laws in place here. That’ll make it easier to work on you.” He smiled. “Work on you is obviously a euphemism,” he said. “By the time we’re done with you, I don’t know how much of your mind will be left.”

He struck the door twice with the flat of his hand. “Then again,” he said, “it’s an open question how much of your mind is there now.” The door groaned and slid open. “Be seeing you,” the gray man said, and slipped out.