Peter David - Out of the Darkness

But Caso looked surprisingly uncomfortable. “Actually, Prime Minister, they should be at full effect by now. Before now, in fact. But he has been resisting all of our initial questions.”

“Resisting?” Durla was astonished. “Are you certain you have administered them properly?”

“Positive, Prime Minister,” Caso answered stiffly. “And yet he resists? Increase the dosage.”

“That may not be wise…” Durla, feeling the quiet smoldering of Milifa next to him, said tightly, “On my authority. Do it.”

Caso bowed deeply and put together another dosage. Moments later there was enough truth drug pumping through Lanas’ veins to send a dozen Centauri pouring out every secret they’d ever held, all the way back to childhood.

Rem Lanas’ eyes remained glazed. It was as if he was withdrawing completely into himself.

“I checked the records on this man,” Caso said. “He was a worker on K0643.”

“Was he now,” Durla said. The excavation on K0643 had proven to be one of Durla’s only unqualified disasters. He had been certain that there was some great source of weaponry there, but the entire excavation had been destroyed. There were wild rumors that technomages had somehow been involved… fleeting glimpses of them, but accounts of their numbers ranged from three to thirty. No one seemed sure of anything. He wondered if Lanas had beenone of the workers who had been questioned. He leaned forward, and said, “What is your name?”

“Lanas. Rem Lanas.” His voice was thick and distant. “And are you part of an organization?”

Lanas’ head teetered in affirmation.

“And what,” Durla said with clear urgency, “is that organization? Tell me about it. Who is the head?”

“Minister… Durla.”

A confused look passed among the Centauri in the room. Durla could feel Milifa’s gaze boring through him, and he felt a faint buzz of danger. “Yes, I am Prime Minister Durla,” he said, trying to discern whether the confused Lanas might simply be addressing him directly. “Who is the head of your organization?”

“Minister Durla,” Rem Lanas said, this time with more conviction.

The blood drained from Durla’s face.

But Caso looked suspicious, and said, “What is the nature of this organization?”

“Employment… workers… for excavation purposes…”

Durla put his face in his hands, partly out of frustrationand partly to hide his relief. Such an absurd misunderstanding could have led to a world of trouble if left unchecked. “The Committee for Centauri Advancement,” he said.

“Yes… organization…” Rem Lanas told them. He was half smiling, but it was such a disassociated look that it was clear he was thinking about something else completely.

Durla looked to Milifa, who seemed less than amused. “It’s the association I created for the purpose of organizing Centauri workers for—”

“I do not care,” Milifa said flatly. “I want to know about the bastards who killed my son. If he’s one of them, I want all their names.”

Durla nodded and turned back to Rem Lanas. “I am speaking of a terrorist organization. An organization created for sabotage. You are part of such a group, yes?”

Lanas nodded his head.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Durla said, smirking. Caso nodded approvingly. “How many people are in it?”

“All of them,” Lanas told him.

“Don’t spar with me, Lanas,” Durla warned, becoming increasingly annoyed. He glanced up at Caso. “How is he able to do this?”

“I’m not sure,” Caso said, looking a bit worried. “He should be unable to hold back anything. It should just all be spilling out of him.”

“Lanas… who is the head of the organization?” Durla asked, “The head?”

“Yes.”

“The head… is our leader.”

“Yes. His name. What is the name of the head of the organization?”

And his reply made no sense at all. “No. What is the name of the man on second base.”

“Who?” Durla said, utterly flummoxed.

“No. Who is on first.”

“What?”

“What is on second.”

Durla felt as if he were losing his mind. In a harsh whisper he demanded of Caso, “This is gibberish. What is he saying?”

“I don’t know!” Caso replied loudly.

“Third base,” Rem Lanas intoned, as if by rote.

Durla was up off his chair with such force that he knocked it over. Caso was about to speak when an angry prime minister grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him back up against the wall. “This is idiocy!” he said tightly. “What sort of game is this?”

“It’s n-not a game!” Caso stammered, his veneer of Prime Candidate indifference wavering under the infuriated onslaught of the most powerful man on Centauri Prime. “It… it must be a failsafe…”

“Failsafe? What sort of—”

“Something planted in his mind. Imprinted. So that if he’s being questioned or probed, instead of breaking through to the core of what we want to know, his mind automatically reverts to this nonsense. It becomes a loop that we can’t get past.”

“That’s impossible!”

“No. It’s not. I’ve…” He licked his lips nervously. “I’ve heard technomages can accomplish such things…”

“Now it’s technomages!” Milifa bellowed. “Drugs! Children’s stories about technomages! What sort of government are you running here, Durla!”

Durla rounded on him, suddenly not caring just how powerful a house Milifa ran. He pointed a trembling finger at Milifa, and said, “The kind of government that could strip you of name, rank, and property with a snap of my fingers! So watch yourself, Milifa, and show some respect for who and what I am, before I make you less than who and what you are!”

Milifa, wisely, said nothing, but the set of his face made it clear he was not happy.

Durla, for his part, felt shamed. And the notion that this scrawny no one was playing games with him and shaming him in front of a long—standing ally infuriated him beyond reason. “Forget the drugs,” he told Caso. “Now… now we chat with him in the way we used to do these things.”

Minutes later, Rem Lanas was upright and spread-eagled, his arms tied to the walls on either side of the cell. Durla stood several feet away, the lash in his hand crackling with energy.

“Prime Minister.” Caso sounded respectful but nervous. “The drugs in his system may impede his understanding if another element, such as extreme pain, is introduced into—”

“Then we shall give his system a chance to work the drugs out.” He saw Milifa nod slightly in approval, took a step back and swung his arm around expertly. The lash slammed across Rem Lanas’ back, shredding his shirt in a second. Lanas screamed, his eyes going wide, his body spasming.

“You felt that, didn’t you,” Durla said in a low voice. “Didn’t you, Lanas?”

“Y-yes,” he managed to say.

“No one can endure more than forty lashes of that nature,” Durla continued. “I do not suggest you be the first person to try.”

“I… don’t want to die…”

“At last, truth,” Durla noted with satisfaction. “We don’t care about you, Lanas. We want those in charge.”

“In charge… of what?”

Durla did not hesitate. He swung the lash again, and again. Ten cracks of the lash crashed across Lanas’ back, and each time the prisoner howled, until it seemed to Durla he could not remember a time when screams were not ringing in his ears.

“That,” he said, “is eleven.”

But Lanas didn’t hear him, because he had lapsed into unconsciousness.

“Bring him around,” Durla said to Caso.

Caso did so with brisk efficiency. Durla could see it in Lanas’ eyes: When he came to, for a moment he didn’t realize where he was. Perhaps he thought that what he had experienced was some sort of tortured dream. When he looked around, however, he realized the all-too-real nature of his predicament.