Robert Silverberg - The Longest Way Home

“Well,” he said, glancing from Joseph to the assortment of objects on his desk, and then to Joseph again. “These things are very interesting. Where did you get them?”

“They were given to me,” said Joseph.

“By whom?”

“Different people. It’s hard to remember. I’ve been traveling so long.”

“Traveling from where?”

“From the north,” Joseph said. He hesitated a moment. “From High Manza,” he added.

The officer’s gaze rested coldly on Joseph. “From where in High Manza, exactly?”

“A place called Getfen House, it was.” It was Joseph’s intention to tell as few lies as possible, while revealing as little as he could that might be incriminating.

“You came from a Great House?”

“I was there just a little while. I was not a part of House Getfen at all.”

“I see.” The officer played with the things on the desk, inattentively fondling Joseph’s torch, his cutting-tool, his book-reader. Joseph hated that, that this man should be touching his beloved things. “And what is your name?” the officer asked, after a time.

“Joseph,” Joseph said. He did not add his title or his surname. It would not do to try to masquerade as Waerna of Ludbrek House any longer, for that had not worked particularly well at Eysar Haven and was unlikely to do any better for him here, and he preferred to use his real name rather than to try to invent anything else. They would not necessarily recognize “Joseph” as a Master name, he thought, not if he held back “Master” and “Keilloran” from them.

But the name did seem odd to the Folkish officer, as well it should have. He repeated it a couple of times, frowning over it, and observed that he had never heard a name like that before. Joseph shrugged and offered no comment. Then the officer looked up at him again and said, “Have you taken part in any of the fighting, Joseph?”

“No.”

“None? None at all?”

“I am not a part of the war.”

The officer laughed. “How can you say that? Everyone is part of the war, everyone! You, me, the Indigenes, the poriphars, everyone. The animals in the fields are part of the war. There is no hiding from the war. Truly, you have not fought at all?”

“Not at all, no.”

“Where have you been, then?”

“In the forests, mostly.”

“Yes. Yes, I can see that. You have a wild look about you, Joseph. And a wild smell.” Again the officer played with the things from the utility case. He ran his fingertips over them, almost lovingly, and smiled. “These are Master things, some of them. You know that, don’t you, Joseph?” Joseph said nothing. Then the officer said, switching for the first time from Folkish to Master, and with a sudden ferocity entering his voice, “What you are is a spy, are you not, Joseph? Admit it. Admit it!”

“That is not so,” said Joseph, replying in Folkish. There was no harm in revealing that he understood Master—there was no Folker who did not—but he would not speak it here. “It is just not so!”

“But what else can you be but a spy?”

“It is not so,” Joseph said again, more mildly. “I am not in any way a spy. I told you, I am not a part of the war. I know nothing whatever about what has been going on. I have been in the forests.”

“A mere wanderer.”

“A wanderer, yes. They attacked Getfen House, where I was staying, and I went into the forests. I could not tell you what has happened in the world since.”

“You did not fight, and you are not a spy,” the officer said musingly. He drummed on his desktop with the fingers of one hand. Then he rose and came around the desk to where Joseph was standing. He was surprisingly tall for a Folker, just a few inches shorter than Joseph, and the immense width of his shoulders made him seem inordinately strong, formidably intimidating. He stared at Joseph for an interminable moment. Then, almost casually, he placed his right hand on Joseph’s right shoulder and with steady, inexorable pressure forced Joseph to his knees. Joseph submitted without resisting, though he was boiling within. He doubted that he could have resisted that force anyway.

The Folkish officer held him lightly by his ear. “At last, now, tell me who you are spying for.”

“Not for anybody,” Joseph said.

The fingers gripping his ear tightened. Joseph felt himself being pushed forward until his nose was close to the floor.

“I have other things to do today,” the officer said. “You are wasting my time. Tell me who you’re working for, and then we can move along.”

“I can’t tell you, because I’m not working for anyone.”

“Not working for the traitors who come in the night and attack the camps of patriots, and strive to undo all that we have worked so hard to achieve?”

“I know nothing about any of that.”

“Right. Just an innocent wanderer in the forests.”

“I wanted no part of the war. When they burned Getfen House I ran away. I have been running ever since.”

“Ah. Ah.” It was a sound of annoyance, of disgust, even. “You waste my time.” Now he was twisting the ear. It was an agonizing sensation. Joseph bit his lip, but did not cry out.

“Go ahead, pull it off, if you like,” he said. “I still couldn’t tell you anything, because I have nothing to tell.”

“Ah,” said the officer one more time, and released Joseph’s ear with a sharp pushing motion that sent him flat on his face. Joseph waited for—what, a kick? A punch? But nothing happened. The man stepped back and told Joseph to rise. Joseph did, somewhat uncertainly. He was trembling all over. The officer was staring at him, frowning. His lips were moving faintly, as though he were framing further questions, the fatal ones that Joseph was dreading, and Joseph waited, wondering when the man would ask him what he had been doing at Getfen House, or what clan of the Folk he belonged to, or which towns and villages he had passed through on his way from High Manza to here. Joseph did not dare answer the first question, could not answer the second, and was unwilling to answer the third, because anything he said linking him to Eysar Haven or the Indigene villages might lead to his unmasking as a Master. Of course, the man could simply ask him outright whether he was a Master, considering that he looked more like one than like any sort of Folker. But he did not ask him that, either: he did not ask any of those obvious things. A course that seemed obvious to Joseph was apparently not so to him. The officer said only, “Well, we are not torturers here. If you’re unwilling to speak, we can wait until you are. We will keep you here until you beg us to question you again, and then you will tell us everything. You can go and rot until then.” And to the guard waiting at the door he said, “Take him back to the enclosure.”

Joseph did not bother counting the days. Perhaps a week went by, perhaps two. He was feverish some of the time, shaking, sometimes uncertain of where he was. Then the fever left him, but he still felt weak and sickly. The strength that he had regained at Eysar Village was going from him again, now that he had to depend on the miserable prison-camp food. He was losing what little weight he had managed to put on in the weeks just past. Familiar sensations reasserted themselves: giddiness, blurred vision, mental confusion. One afternoon he found himself once again quite seriously considering the proposition that as the starvation proceeded he would become completely weightless and would be able to float up and out of here and home. Then he remembered that some such thought had crossed his mind much earlier in the trek, and he reminded himself that no such thing must be possible, or else he would surely have attempted it long before. And then, when he felt a little better, Joseph was amazed that he had allowed himself even to speculate about such an idiotic thing.