Chapter 2: Exploring the Prison

Something soft against my cheek, and I was in a prone position, and my eyes were closed, and somewhere in the background a radio or other device was playing "Stranger in My Own Home Town," and instinct told me to jump up and look about me instantly, but reason overrode instinct by pointing out that I'd probably been lying here for quite some time already and nothing too terrible had happened yet, and it might be best to avoid attracting attention for at least a few more minutes while I tried to remember why I was suddenly waking up, because I don't sleep in the first place, not in the normal sense!

I searched my memory and remembered an auburn-haired sorceress who led me criss-crossing a continent, apparently at random, until we just happened to pass near a swarthy man on a trail in a park. An ambush, of course—hindsight is always so much clearer on these things. Flaunting her power, with psychic shields to hide her intent and make me wonder, she had flamboyantly kept my attention focused upon herself while I disregarded the man as just another mortal bystander until he was within range to spring the real trap. He was no sorcerer, I was sure—but he had been armed with something that did very peculiar things to me. Not painful, but unsettling. Even disorienting; as near as I could recall from the moments before he seized the opportunity to render me unconscious.

In those last few moments, I had tried to sidestep to Utah to shake them off, and nothing had happened. Why not? Sidestepping was no great trick; I could do it a thousand times a day. I simply—

Simply—

This was ridiculous. It was merely a question of concentrating upon—

Or perhaps focusing my—

My what?

I had forgotten. Opening my eyes: A gray stone wall a few inches in front of them. Twist head a little, look straight up: the wall extended to meet a stone ceiling several feet overhead. Hasty self-diagnosis: vision clear, no headache to speak of, no ringing in my ears, confusion but not nausea, no sense of slowly emerging from a stupor; hence, little chance of concussion. No feverish feeling either. Breathing freely. I wasn't about to get up and walk around yet—but I didn't anticipate any real problems in that department. I didn't feel I was physically injured in any significant way. That left the realm of the mind and the spirit.

A particularly powerful and gifted sorceress might—conceivably—have been able to work very hard during my unconsciousness to somehow implant mental blocks to prevent me from accessing my ability to travel quickly to distant places—but I believed it should have taken considerable time to work past my defenses by such means if it worked at all, and the problem had begun when I was wide awake, immediately after her confederate sprayed something into my mouth, and before she had the chance to cast any elaborate spells against me.

Ergo, that clear liquid I had inadvertently swallowed was the key to the puzzle. The sorceress's entire purpose had been to maneuver me into position for that attack to blindside me. Anything she had subsequently done was just icing on the cake, I suspected.

Analyze its effects, Phantom Stranger! Not poison in the conventional sense or I should have noticed other symptoms by now. Something that had drained me of mystical energy, severed my ties to other power sources?

Harder to say. But I didn't feel as empty as I thought I would if my connections to power sources had been completely severed, like pulling the plug on a powerful machine.

(And what are those sources, Stranger? Do you draw upon a single great external source for your true power, or is it entirely inherent within your own being if you just know how to focus it, or do you have a variety of ways to access and channel different flavors of power as required, depending upon what best suits the circumstances?)

Excellent questions! The answers had fled from my mind.

Answers. A pattern was beginning to emerge. Whatever power I normally used might still be there for all I knew (wherever "there" was) - but I couldn't remember anything specific about what do with it. Source? Nature? Operating methods? I thought I still remembered the effects I could achieve in a normal day's work, but not how I had achieved them.

I also knew I had routinely been making use of my unusual abilities for a very long time—but I was hard put to name a figure. What were the oldest things I could remember? Several images of scenes from the Roman Empire (and other, contemporary civilizations) sprang to mind as quickly as I phrased the mental question—but I wasn't sure if those were the oldest things my memory ought to have in storage. How much further back did my memories go? How much further were they supposed to go?

I was the Phantom Stranger, and now even I did not know what that meant.

Someone had turned a hole in the wall into a cell. Sturdy vertical bars about six inches apart sealed off the front. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were natural rock. (Living rock?). The floor space was rectangular, about twenty feet by thirty, the ceiling roughly ten feet high. The cell contained a dark green plastic chair all cast of one piece, a sink, a toilet, and a cardboard box with some books and magazines in it—and that box was on top of another box, lid still on, contents unknown. Also one rather bewildered Stranger, of course—lying on what I thought was a cot. I finally sat up. Yes, it was a perfectly ordinary-looking cot. My head had been resting on a pillow.

Visual self-examination: Still wearing most of my clothes. Turtleneck, trousers, shoes, socks, even underwear when I thought to check. My cape was hanging on the back of the plastic chair, and my hat was resting on the seat.

Visual sweep through the bars: This cell was one pocket attached to a much larger cavern. Sitting at some sort of computer, about fifty feet away, his left profile toward me, was the swarthy man who had sprayed a clear liquid into my mouth and somehow—hold that thought. Let it rest awhile. Continue taking inventory of the environment. The computer he was working at was on a very large, very crowded table, and cables and things connected it to some much larger equipment several feet away. Not my field of expertise. Something else on that table was still playing Elvis Presley recordings. The swarthy man was typing very quickly.

The man wore a shoulder holster. From the look of the butt, I deduced it was some sort of semiautomatic handgun. I knew the difference between a semiautomatic and a revolver, but I had no memory of ever feeling the need to study the subject any further. (Not that my memory was as reliable as it used to be.)

The man soon became aware of my changed position and swiveled ninety degrees on his chair to face me. He arose to his feet, but did not speak immediately; he was watching my face. When my eyes had swept back and forth across all of the cavern that I could see for at least the third time, he asked conversationally, "Looking for anything in particular?"

"Bamboo slivers, red-hot irons, Iron Maidens, hypodermics, Judas chairs, whips, flails, thumbscrews, or perhaps a bucket with a tiny hole in the base."

He squinted at me. "A leaky bucket?"

"For 'Chinese' water torture," I explained.

"Ah, of course. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but we have so little interest in interrogating you that we didn't even bother to invest in a polygraph. Not even an ordinary civilian model, much less one with the option of giving the subject nasty electrical shocks if he persists in lying." As he spoke, he had been striding toward my cell, stopping at least ten feet away. He was no longer wearing the business suit I'd seen in the ambush in the park; but rather what looked like some sort of military camouflage fatigues. His facial features - the cheekbones, the thick lips, the heavy-lidded eyes, and so forth - gave him a rather Mayan look, although his English sounded Texan. Descended from Mexican or Guatemalan immigrants, perhaps? Normally I would have known his name by now, but instead it was the best I could do to barely sense some combination of amusement and nervousness in him; amusement dominating.

Fleetingly, it occurred to me that I had no idea how well a polygraph would do at reading my metabolism—had I ever known?—but apparently that would remain an academic point.

I disdained the cliché of asking Where am I?—it seemed likely he would not tell me anything more substantial than "in our secret base"—and moved on to other things. "Then how long a stay should I anticipate?"

He smiled broadly. "Oh, perhaps a month or two. An immortal should be able to do that standing on his head!"

"And then?"

He shrugged. "Then we leave. When we're a reasonable distance away I transmit the signal that will open the door and turn you loose."

We? Does he just mean himself and the sorceress, or a much larger organization, or what? I filed that question away—he seemed willing to talk about my own circumstances, but I doubted he would provide me with a Table of Organization and Equipment for whatever group had captured me.

Perhaps I looked skeptical at the bland assurance that I would be turned loose unharmed. He added pointedly, "If we needed you dead, we already had our best chance while you were unconscious. But instead, we will settle for keeping you safely out of the way for awhile. After that, you can go back to meddling in mortal affairs all you like—and if you come looking for us at that point, we'll take our chances!"

I normally have a keen ear for falsehood—and I didn't get any sense that he was telling a direct lie - but I didn't trust my own perceptions right now. Or he might sincerely believe what he was saying—but the auburn-haired sorceress or someone else might be planning a very different fate for me, without having advised him of that fact!

The apparent "logic" of his reassurance was not airtight. I tried to review the full list of all the evil spells and rituals I know that require the sacrifice of a sentient being—but only at a certain time on a certain day to achieve the proper effect; not just whenever you happen to feel like it. In my current condition I thought I could only remember seven, but I suspected the full list would be much longer. Despite his glib promises, the swarthy man and the auburn-haired sorceress (his employer? Servant? Lover? Fellow cultist?) might be intending to keep me alive and well only until the time was ripe for me to become the central feature of a special ceremony.

"What have you done to me?"

"Taken away pieces of your memory!" he said helpfully, telling me nothing I hadn't already noticed on my own. "I'm not sure just how much. We worked on the theory that our approach would severely impede the use of your powers—as a side effect. Given that you're still in that cell, I'd say we got it right."

"I meant something more specific - how did you do it?"

"I knew what you meant," he assured me. "But you don't Need to Know that information. There is so much we don't understand about your powers and metabolism—I don't know the odds, but it's quite possible that possessing detailed information would let you orchestrate your own recovery much faster than we'd like."

"Then you expect me to recover?"

"You're immortal, and you haven't been physically harmed. You must have advanced 'healing mechanisms' to deal with bizarre, nonfatal setbacks, given time. I refuse to believe that this is the first time in however-many-centuries-you've-been-alive that you've had to deal with what we might call, loosely, severe psychic or psychological injury. Obviously you were able to function again in the long run."

"If anything roughly equivalent to my current condition has ever been inflicted upon me before, I don't recall it," I said drily (and honestly).

He shrugged. "That's pretty much the effect we were aiming for. I figure it will all come back to you. I really have no idea what the 'natural' timeframe should be for your recovery, but I fully expect you to make one. Eventually. Perhaps in a long series of small steps. Perhaps accelerating the process with help from others once you're out of here. A year, a decade, a century, who knows?"

The sound of footsteps on the stone floor, and the auburn-haired sorceress strode into view, wearing hiking shoes, blue jeans, and a loose, long-sleeved checked shirt - different shades of blue and white in it. The swarthy man smiled as he turned his head and saw her; I gathered there was a certain fondness there.

"How is he?"

"He hasn't mentioned any aches and pains," the man assured her. "Perfectly coherent. Asking lots of questions—I've told him we only want to temporarily immobilize him, and then turn him loose to fend for himself in due time—but I'm not sure he believes me. I probably wouldn't if I were on the other side of the bars."

She smiled slightly. "Perhaps it would be more sociable of us to introduce ourselves to our . . . unwilling guest. A token gesture of our esteem for him, despite current differences of opinion?"

He frowned. "Seems an unnecessary risk. I don't know how good he'll be at tracking people down right after we turn him loose, but I'd rather not pave the way for him."

"First names only - enough to let him have something to call us besides 'Hey, you!'"

"But -"

She turned and looked me in the eye. (Her own eyes were a pale blue-gray.) "I am Zinerva." She looked back at her associate and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"Yes, mother," he said resignedly. I blinked before I realized it was irony; he actually looked at least a few years older than she, and probably was. He looked over at me and said flatly, "Call me Arlo; everyone does." He obviously didn't like saying it, but then she smiled warmly at his cooperation and he perked up again. I had been wondering about the pecking order in their organization - at the moment, Zinerva appeared to be dominant; but Arlo's general tone toward her was not that of a lackey reporting to a lofty superior in a rigid, class-conscious hierarchy; nor did I get the feeling that he was afraid of her.

It was quite possible that there were other subjects where she would yield to his judgment as quickly as he had yielded to hers. Far too soon to reach any conclusions about their chain of command.

Zinerva studied my cell through the bars (never coming within arm's reach, I noticed) and addressed me. "One of those boxes has various hygienic items that you might or might not need. Soap, toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, that sort of thing. You can wash your clothes in the sink if they get too dirty - we weren't sure if such things would be a problem with your memory gone. You'll find some towels and extra blankets beneath your cot if you ever need them."

A new thought occurred to me and I glanced at my cape, which I had not even touched since awakening in the cell. Both of them caught it. Arlo spoke first.

"Zinerva went over your clothes with a fine-toothed comb, sorcerously speaking, while you were still out cold. Just to be on the safe side, she had to confiscate several items, but she said the cape itself was nothing inherently dangerous. Me, I half-expected her to find you kept a Colt .45 handy for those nasty little emergencies where magic just won't cut it!"

I winced at the thought without even knowing why, even as I simultaneously wondered just what school of magic Zinerva's teacher had concentrated upon. Visions of hexagrams and pentacles danced in my head for a moment. It might - somehow - make a difference in what she had detected and what she had guarded against. Meanwhile, Zinerva was speaking again. "The other box has some miscellaneous reading material if you get bored. We'll check up on you, every once in awhile - if you think there's something else you need, we're willing to give it reasonable consideration. You'll find it's much easier for us to toss things in through the bars than it is for you to do the reverse," she added sweetly (just in case I had been pondering the idea of requesting ingredients that could theoretically be used to make my very own slingshot or crossbow or poisoned darts, I supposed).

She added, "I've always understood that you don't require food or drink. If it turns out that's no longer valid, say something. Anyway, you can always drink from the tap of the sink if you get thirsty between our visits. Any questions right now?"

I looked over at the far corner of my cell. "Why the toilet? I never need them."

Arlo shrugged. "We'd heard that—but we could have heard wrong. Besides, we didn't build that cell exclusively for you. One never knows when it might be necessary to incarcerate someone in a good cause. Most prisoners would be grateful for sanitary facilities."

"Understandable," I conceded, forbearing to argue the point of whether or not prisoners should properly be "grateful" for little kindnesses from their abductors.

They soon made their excuses (scarcely necessary, but I had the strange feeling they were trying to be moderately polite in spite of the awkward situation) and vanished from my line of sight by simply walking away to my left. I was certain I once could have tracked them a considerable distance with enhanced perceptions - but not today.

I was just as glad they were gone. The conversation with Arlo and Zinerva, and particularly the sort of recollections different points did or didn't trigger in my own skull, had given me the first glimmering of an idea that might actually serve to get me out of captivity. Given the condition of my memory, it would probably turn out to be a fiasco with flaws I simply wouldn't perceive until it was too late, but what did I have to lose?

I needed to examine my cloak. I needed to examine whatever else they had left for my comfort. I needed to meditate at length to determine how much I still remembered about the arcane arts. Then I needed to make some nail-biting tactical decisions before I actually did anything.