D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

‘My favorite cyborg,’ he said, not rising. ‘You must come and tell me all about it.’

‘All about what?’

A degree of aggression would be expected. Not that I cared. Dr Klausen didn’t sit at a desk, but in one of those womb-things hanging on a chain from the ceiling. There were three other chairs in the room, and he did nothing to help me choose. Presumably the one I picked would be significant. Of something. To put the interview on its right footing I chose a hard, upright chair that left me facing the window, with Klausen almost in silhouette against it. If I was to be interrogated, then I was to be interrogated. Not of course, that I cared.

‘Tell you all about what?’ I said.

‘You’re a professional interviewer. You know how much time can be wasted by the subject pretending not to understand the question.’

‘I also know how much time can be wasted by making the question too unspecific.’

I was expecting him to twiddle his chair on its piece of chain, but he didn’t. ‘If you want a battle, we can easily have one. This isn’t a selection board — you went through that months ago. If I was wrong then, it’s certainly far too late to reverse my decision now.’

‘Then what am I here for?’

‘Typically, you never asked my reasons for recommending you.’

That ‘typically’ got me. ‘And, equally typically, you’re going to tell me all the same.’

‘It annoys you that any of your actions should be predictable?’

‘No. It annoys me that you should think yourself so clever for predicting them.’

‘If I sounded like that, I’m sorry.’

He might have been sincere. But interrogators went in for sincerity: they took a course in it at Interrogators’ School.

‘All right,’ I said, humoringly, ‘tell me why you recommended me.’

He had it planned. ‘You were an outsider. You were also exceptionally stable.’

‘I’m an outsider now, all right.’

‘And now with good surgical reason, which is a relief to you.’

‘No!’

My anger was not so much at his cruel lie as at the way he’d tricked me into denying it. ‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I suppose you must.’ And cared. Something — my famous stability? — prevented me, but only just, from laying violent hands on him, where he sat, quite motionless, observing, on the end of his long black chain. I had no words, words that could not be ridiculed, for my secret hope. And no violence either.

‘You’re wrong, Klausen,’ was all I could say. ‘Believe me, you’re wrong.’

He moved at last, lifting his feet so that the chair swung slowly. ‘Convince me,’ he said.

‘Why should I bother?’

‘Because you bothered to contradict me in the first place. We both know it was my report more than anything else that got you the job. We weren’t always on opposite sides.’

He was saying he’d given me something to blame. He’d also provided himself as a scapegoat for the blame. I might have known any coin Klausen tossed would have two heads.

‘We never did speak the same language,’ I said, in non-reply.

‘I’m sure you realize, Roddie, that your alienation is not basically from other people but from yourself.’

‘That’s what the book says.’

‘Books are often right.’

His pathetic, priestlike complacency no longer bothered me. ‘So that’s what I’m here for? So that you can tell me how much I hate myself?’

‘Telling you what you already know is one thing. Getting you to admit it is another.’

Once this incredible man had taken me in. But in those days, of course, he’d had something I needed… I caught myself shifting my ass from one flabby side to the other, and went right on doing it. He could watch me and smile to himself at his wisdom as much as he liked.

‘Know thyself, saith the prophet.’ Anyway, the fucking chairs were hard, so what did he expect? ‘Which, being interpreted, Klausen, means jack off like crazy.’

He made like he’d heard it all before. ‘I doubt if you can do even that now, with Vincent watching.’

‘He needn’t know. I can turn down the sound and look the other way.’

Too late I saw he’d won the point. But he graciously let it pass. ‘Did you turn down the sound before you came in here?’ he asked.

‘I’m not even wearing the gear. It came off for the doctors, and I carefully didn’t put it back.’

‘I’m glad.’ He heaved himself out of his chair, needing a new paragraph, and went to the window. The Clinic had Clinic grounds, a Clinic fountain, Clinic trees. ‘This stability of yours,’ he said to the Clinic grass, ‘it’s going to be strained. I wanted you to understand how much.’

He expected some response, but got none.

‘That’s all, Roddie. I just wanted you to understand how much.’

My silence pitied him. My God, Klausen turned me off.

‘And I think you do. You’re nobody’s fool, Roddie. You understand very well. I hope you make it.’

He seemed to have finished, so I got up and left. It seemed to me that the score was fairly even. And I had work to do, even if he hadn’t. I had an appointment after lunch with Clement Pyke, father to the only true Katherine Mortenhoe.

Katherine found the Castle packed solid with parties of children and afternoon shift workers whiling away the sunny morning. Movement inside its walls was only possible in the wake of the quarter-hourly conducted tours. She and Harry waited in line, then tagged along, across the drawbridge (labeled Drawbridge), through the keep (labeled Keep), around the roped-off (and labeled) inner courtyard, and into the labeled Great Hall. They moved slowly, keeping as far back as they could from the guide’s piercing PA system.

In the armory (labeled Armoury) beyond the Great Hall there was a long wait, people piling in behind, while the party strung itself out up the famous 300-step spiral staircase. The ascent was slow and claustrophobic, and, as it progressed, was made increasingly difficult by breathless climbers sitting on the steps to rest. Kate was proud of Harry: he made it to the top in one.

The Castle stood on a steep little hill in the middle of the city, its gray towers higher than all but the tallest of the surrounding point blocks. The guide interrupted his intoned but lurid description of past glories and spent several minutes identifying present landmarks. His party, showing their first signs of real animation, hung over the labeled Battlements, shrieking and gesticulating as they picked out their own areas, and possibly even their own windows in their own residential buildings. The past meant nothing to them. Their security lay in recognizing the ornaments on the mantelpiece of this year’s flat. Katherine drew Harry out of the circulation flow, into an embrasure (labeled Embrasure). These same people, on the moors or by the sea, would stay within the safe, six-foot ambience of their motorcars.

Harry squared his shoulders. ‘Just think of being a sentry,’ he said, ‘up here on a windy night.’ He gazed around proprietorially, stamping his halberd and clinking his coat of mail.

And then, suddenly and inconveniently, quite without warning, she had her first paralysis.

She’d expected the rigor first, and the tight feeling around her scalp, but neither of these happened. She just lurched against Harry and he sensibly propped her up. It wasn’t a bad paralysis, just one leg as far as the knee really, but she was grateful to Harry for being there, and for being so sensible. Otherwise she could easily have fallen down and bumped herself.

He whispered kind things to her and she leaned on the comfortable (not fat) bulk of him, trying to think if there had been some sensation in the last few minutes that might have warned her. She’d heard, for example, that epileptics saw flashing lights or smelled funny smells. Either would be useful. But she could remember nothing of the sort… A castle attendant (labeled Castle Attendant) pushed toward them through the landmark-spotting crowd.