Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

So far, none of them had. “Colonel,” Dr. Steffens had said, not bothering to hide her disdain, “I’ve worked with Congo hemorrhagic fever, Marburg, and Ebola. Dr. Yu headed the team for the Embassy work on R. sporii . Zack McKay is an expert on Lassa. We will not get careless.”

“Everybody is careless sometime, Dr. Steffens,” he’d said. She didn’t like him, nor he her.

Nor did he like putting the stockade in Lab Dome underground annex. But there was no other place. The underground annex in Enclave was used to bring in Settlement crops and forest game, and kitchen staff were in and out constantly.

The private on stockade duty opened the cell door for Jason and Lindy. The New America soldier sat in the same cell where James Anderson had killed himself. Nothing indicated that fact; the alien material of the floor was as impervious to stains as to ordnance. A plate of untouched food sat beside the teenager. One wrist and both feet manacled, the kid glared at Jason and Lindy from defiant, scared eyes. His wispy beard had become neither fuller nor longer.

“I’m Colonel Jenner and I command here,” Jason said. “Your name and rank?” Some New America cells kept to old rules for POWs; some did not.

The boy said nothing.

“Corporal, secure the prisoner.”

Thompson expertly pinned the boy with a choke hold. Before he could even struggle, Lindy wrapped a tourniquet around his upper arm and slid a needle into a vein on the inner surface of his elbow.

Jason neither liked nor trusted truth drugs. They hadn’t advanced much in fifty years; they usually produced an unsortable mishmash of fact, fantasy, and gibberish; a personality with strong defenses and even minimal conditioning could withstand them. They had not worked with Anderson. Jason wasn’t a trained interrogator, and he doubted that this boy had any useful information. But he had to do this, just in case.

Or was this interrogation, done this gentler way, to demonstrate to Lindy that he was not a monster?

To demonstrate that to the image of Jane in his mind, more than she should be?

To demonstrate to Colin?

“He’s under,” Lindy said. “Just a minute…”

Jason said, “Corporal, dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” He left, closing the door.

With narcosynthesis, timing mattered. The subject fell into sleep, and then partially aroused from it. Questioning needed to happen during the brief period of twilight consciousness, when inhibitions were lowered and the cortex no longer functioned as a control over what was said. Maintaining that state required frequent, carefully balanced doses of Lindy’s witches’ brew of depressant, barbiturate, and ataraxic. She had proved to be surprisingly good at this.

“Okay,” she said.

Jason said, “What is your name?”

“Tommy. I am Tommy.”

A lucid response, but thick and mumbling. “Tommy what?”

“Tommy knockers. Grandma said… tom toms… magic…” His body in the clean uniform twitched and then he was asleep. Lindy gave him more drug.

“Where did you get the uniform, Tommy?”

“Grandma. Sewed my… sewn shut…”

“Where did you get the uniform? Where?”

“Sierra Depot.” Suddenly clear and crisp. But only for a moment. “Night… Blackie said… that girl…”

“Who was at Sierra Depot?”

“Danced with her but she wouldn’t… they all… Grandma sewed it for me. Her big table, so big… why did Blackie do that? Why wouldn’t she dance with me?” His face twisted, about to cry.

This was pointless. Bits and pieces of this pathetic kid’s lost life, floating to the surface like jetsam after a shipwreck. He must have been only five or six when the Collapse happened.

Fragments of lost life mingled with bits of erotic fantasy. “I licked her and fucked her… tits and ass and cunt… Grandma said…”

Jason put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “Who was at Sierra Depot?”

“Sierra…” He lapsed into sleep.

“More, Lindy…. okay, Tommy, who was at Sierra Depot ?”

“Unit Nineteen. We killed all the fuckers, we…”

“You what? What did Unit Nineteen do at Sierra Depot? Tell me!”

“There’s a password. Blackie said…”

“A password to what?”

“A key.”

“A key to what?”

“To the locked room.”

“What’s in the locked room?”

“Full of gold and jewels and silver and girls… Blackie said… gold and myrrh and Frank-in-his-senses… Frank is dead….”

Christ. This was pointless.

Until all at once, it wasn’t.

“Frank who?” Jason asked, because he had to ask something.

“Frank Shuh… Sug… yama. Frankie. The little one.”

Shock jolted Jason, electricity that flashed from his head through his entire body, a lightning stroke that left him momentarily paralyzed. When he could speak again, he said, “Frank Sugiyama? Dr. Frank Philip Sugiyama?”

“They chopped him up. Little Frankie. The doctor screamed but… I couldn’t look and Blackie said I’m a coward….” The boy started to cry.

“ Tell me, ” Jason ordered, but Tommy kept on crying.

Lindy took his free hand and stroked it. She said gently, “Tell me, Tommy.” He grabbed her arm as if he were drowning. “Blackie said… Blackie said… Grandma…”

“It’s all right, Tommy. You can tell me. Grandma wants you to tell me… damn. Asleep again. Just a minute…”

She gave him another injection with her free hand. A soon as his eyes opened, she said, “Tell me about Frank Sugiyama. Was he at Sierra Depot?”

“Yeah. Only they chopped up little Frankie and the screaming… the screaming… why wouldn’t she dance with me in the room with gold and jewels and Blackie said—”

“What is the password to the room with gold and jewels?”

“Through the back door, Blackie said. But Grandma… they chopped her up?”

Jason said, “Who was at Sierra Depot with Frank and little Frankie? Was his family there?”

“Three kids, only she wouldn’t dance with me. They won’t let her dance with me unless he tells. Tits and ass and cunt and… Grandma said!”

“What is her name, Tommy? Tell me!”

“Sewn shut, but Blackie said…”

“Her name! The girl who won’t dance with you!”

“Flower. Don’t hurt me, they always hurt me…”

“Which flower? Which? ”

“Grandma said…”

“Iris? Pansy? Lily? Tell me!”

“Tell me her name,” Lindy said softly into Tommy’s ear. “The name of the girl who won’t dance with you.”

Tommy said, “Rose,” and burst into loud sobbing, snot running onto his uniform, his body with its drugged loss of coordination twitching on the floor.

Lindy looked at Jason. “Do I…”

“Let him sleep.”

A few moments later, he did. They were the longest moments of Jason’s life. Whole continents of thought rose, lived, and fell in those moments.

Lindy waited. Finally she said, “What does it mean?” And when he didn’t answer, “Come on, Jason. Does he mean Frank Sugiyama the famous physicist? What does he have to do with New America?”

“He’s the genius behind a working quantum computer. He’s supposed to be dead.”

“I thought nobody succeeded in making a reliable quantum computer before the Collapse. You’re saying the military did?”

“Yes.”

Lindy was the most intelligent woman he’d ever known. She put it together. “There’s a quantum computer at Sierra Depot. And New America took the depot. Sugiyama is there—”

“We thought he was dead. They must have found him and brought him there.”

“And little Frankie… oh, God, they have his family. They chopped up his son to gain his cooperation, and Rose is—his daughter? ‘Three kids,’ Tommy said. What do they want from Sugiyama? Tommy mentioned a password… what’s in that computer?”