SCENE TEN The infirmary and acute ward, Baltimore State Asylum
The next morning, Miguel de Cervantes woke with a monstrous headache, from a nightmare that faded with altogether too much swiftness for his liking. He couldn't remember the details, only the suffocating sense of loss and remorse that came with it. And it felt far more like a premonition than simply a case of indigestion. Then he looked around, chuckling to find himself sleeping sitting up beside a former examination table that was now part of his 'study". A psychology textbook, as well as one on biochemistry, and another on childhood ailments, the latter two of which he and Antoinette co-authored, lay open in front of the small doctor. He'd simply fallen asleep while reading, but still he felt distinctly uneasy.
"Could someone please pull the shades down in here? The sun's awfully bright for December, isn't it?" Jemison Singer asked, rubbing his forehead, as he walked back into the infirmary above the main ward.
"Dr. Singer, do you have a headache as well?" Miguel asked, his unease getting considerably larger as he peered at the Raleigh native.
"Yes, a rather fierce one, in fact. I didn't even mean to sleep this long, but it seemed to be the only solution." "Jemmy" Singer answered. "And where's… where are the boys, this morning?"
"Come over and take one of the powders Antoinette sent me last week. She has a wonderful way with cures for headaches and other physical annoyances. The Torrys are probably back in their favorite corner of the prize room, with all the quilts and pieces and patches and cot-parts they could drag with them to play 'tens' an'sojers'." The small doctor answered, grinning. 'that whole martial business truly must have been ingrained on his psyche at a very early age, it seems to me, from observing the Torrys at their favorite games."
"I'll take one of those headache powders myself, as long as you're handing them out, Doctor." Artemus Gordon declared, groaning as he got up from the cot he'd been trying to sleep on with little succeSsmost of the night. 'my head feels like it's been twisted off and put back on exactly wrong this morning. It is morning, isn't it?"
"It is eight and three quarters of an hour ante meridian, to be precise, Mr. Gordon." Miguel frowned. "And all three of us now seem to have awoken with headaches! Both of you come over here! I want to examine each of you, at once!"
"There's no seeming about it, and no need for an exam, Doctor, really." Artie protested, manfully restraining his urge to make a horrible pun about two doctors in the same place being a paradox. "Anyway, I was about to ask, how old were you, Doctor, when you first peered through a microscope, or a telescope for that matter?"
"Three and a half, with my father's assistance for the latter, Mr. Gordon. But with the great cost of just the lenses for the former, I had to wait another full year before I was permitted to prepare a slide and then study and report on what I saw. I was rather precocious, however."
"And Jim West could have mustered out a Colonel General, if he hadn't split his own war efforts between the General Staff and the Bureau." Artie proclaimed, sure that Jim would never say the same on his own behalf.
"Of Military Information, yes, yes, I knew that. So, your hypothesis is that Major West possDubbyuhs all the qualities that could have made him another of the "Boy Generals' of the late War? Or are you taking it a step further and claiming he could be some sort of military genius?" Miguel asked, enjoying the return of Artie's healthier, more challenging manner.
"Yes, and yes. Although the latter isn't something Jim would ever lay claim to for himself. He follows the President's example very closely on the subject of his achievements during the War and will hardly talk about them. He doesn't like to talk about the War at all, much, in fact. And right there's another red flag I should have picked right up on, the last time we talked, two years ago!"
"Artie," Jemmy said, shaking his head and grasping Artie's right arm. "We've been all through that. What did we miss, and whatever it was, how could we miSs it? Have you talked to Frank about how sick he felt, when Jim was found here, knowing he didn't stop that obstinate, impetuous Cousin of mine from going out, when Jim was mad as a wet hen and primed for trouble? And doesn't Frank know what we all do: that no one and nothing short of a Presidential order had a snowflake's chance in Hades of stopping Torry that night?"
"If he doesn't I'll be glad to help knock that into his Vermont marble- head, for him." Artie offered.
"Hey, are you three finally awake again, then?" Rand Alexander asked, rushing into the infirmary, with Ori, Rob, and Mairtin right behind him.
"Awake again?" Jemmy asked his protégé from Raleigh. 'randolph, old fellow, what do you mean?"
"He means we were all gassed, down in the main ward, just yesterday." Mairtin answered. "And on top of that someone dosed all three of you, probably with some kind of narcotic."
"Gassed… and then dosed?" Artie echoed. "Ori, what in the world are you talking about? I just woke up and my head's aching like fire but…"
"But you don't remember what happened up here, and then down in the ward, yesterday?" Ori demanded. "Artie, me boyyo, you've got that picture-takin' memory!"
"Well, the picture's damned hazy just now, Sean Oriel, me boyyo. So would you like to explain what you're talking about?" Artemus insisted.
"The bastards who still run this place upped the ante, big time. There was a fire in the Administrator's office, just before noon." Mairtin answered as Ori seemed dumbfounded just at the moment. "And we'll get back to that, but in brief it looks to have been deliberately set, probably in some of those record files locked up in there. And when that happened, you, and the docs, and Jim all came down to the ward. And then the commotion really began. Some of the boys got just plain knocked out when the guards ran in to the middle of the ward. We were trying to raise a ruckus but not the way they had in mind. A lot of the new guards had these odd looking cans or boxes or containers of some kind attached to their rifles. When they fired, the place filled with something very like your tearing gas, but with an extra punch, or maybe something missing. It knocked almost all of us out. "
"Almost all of you?" Miguel asked.
"Mickey and Seanny and I had some of your breathing masks, Artie." Rob answered. "So we were … alright. In any case, when Mickey and I got the three of you fellows up here, Doctor, we couldn't rouse you at all. So that's when we checked further; You were all injected with a drug of some kind. And it must have been a strong one, if none of you remember any of that happening."
"Well, I surely don't." Jemmy admitted. "What happened then?"
"I wired Pop, to let him know about this new trouble." Mairtin answered. "We all thought he should try to convince the President …"
"Hold on!" Artie demanded, all of a sudden realizing what was wrong with what Rob said. "Hold on, you said the three of us were drugged, what about Jim?"
"When we looked around the main ward he wasn't anywhere to be seen." Ori quickly replied. "But before we'd searched all of this building, we found Jim, next door here, in the acute ward, sound asleep, curled up on a cot, just like a little boy. Well, we were so glad that he was safe and he …seemed alright. We didn't want to … to rouse him. So Mickey and Rob didn't really examine Jim to see if he'd been drugged, too."
"Well, then we'd best do that examination, now." Miguel nodded, and turned to Jemmy. "Jemison, I'm still rather stiff, if you'll…"
"Wait." Artie said, holding up one hand. 'doctor, you said a moment ago… Are you sure … the Torrys are awake, now? Because if they are, they're being awfully quiet." Artie asked, looking towards and then striding towards the playroom, his gut instincts not calling out but shrieking.
"He's right, Jemison, if you will …" Miguel reached out for the doctor-agent's assistance. And following the example Jacques set months ago, Jemison lifted Miguel onto his shoulders and strode after Artie.
"Great G-d!" Artie gasped, stopping no more than a foot away from Jim. He felt as though they'd all jumped back seven months and more, to the time the soldier-agent was first found here. Jim sat in the far corner of the playroom, absolutely silent, pressing his thin frame against the place where the two walls met, as if he would merge with that wood and plaster at any moment. His shoulders were slumped, his knees bent, his legs tucked in closely to his chest and his arms folded tightly over his knees. His head lay on that self-pillow as if it were too heavy to lift.
Jim looked more than anything, Artie thought with a shudder, like one of the hundreds of Soldier's memorial statues around the District, the ones showing a uniformed figure in abject mourning for his lost comrades at arms. But he moved and he breathed, the former actor was hugely relieved to see. In fact, Jim shook as if with a new bout of malaria. But there was no hectic color on his face, no sign of dizziness, nausea or other symptoms of that quartan fever's onset. He gave no sign of hearing the trio enter the room, no reaction at all when they moved closer.
"Ori, go send Thomas another wire, right now." Artie whispered to his protégé, fighting for and finding the fortitude to think like an agent. 'the President can't come up here. Something's very wrong and I don't want him anywhere near this place. Well, I didn't want him here to begin with. Word the wire as strongly as you possibly can. And then send one just like it directly to President Grant's private telegraph instrument in the Oval Office, over my name.
As senior agent on the premises, in Thomas' absence, I'm telling the President the circumstances have shifted here so drastically that we cannot do our jobs if he takes such an unwarranted risk. He can fire me when I get back to Washington if he wants to, for putting it that way. But that's exactly the way I'm putting it. You might add that I highly doubt his former Chief Security Advisor would thank the President for gratuitously placing himself in the line of fire."
"Yes, sir." Ori nodded. "And I'm going to send Thaddeus, Mairtin and Rand, since they're in good shape and we need Mick and Rob here, back to the District to give their own report on this in person. I've already sent mine. It was my idea to start up that brouhaha in the main ward. And Mick says nineteen inmates have already died from the effects of that damn gas!"
"Fine, then get going." Artie answered but spared his protégé another glance. 'sean Oriel, me fine boyyo, we all make bad judgment calls at one time or another. Don't waste your time, or your thinking, or your energy on yours. Not now. That can wait till we're … out of this mess. Okay?"
"Okay, ta, Artie." Ori nodded again and strode over to the telegraph on Miguel's desk. Mairtin was already halfway out the door, but Rand stopped long enough to glance at Jemmy. His mentor gave the younger 'tar Heel' one look over his shoulder and simply mouthed. "Go."
Now, stepping closer to Jim, Jemison bit back his own cry of dismay. When Jim laboriously turned his head on its resting place Jemmy saw another frightening change in his affect. The younger agent's blinded, always restless eyes, were fixed on nothing the others could see, and whatever that was was terrifying. After months of moving away from near catatonia, James West once more sat frozen in place, mute, shut down, and shut off from all of them.
What in the very devil could have happened? Artie somehow found the presence of mind to sign, rather than speaking aloud to the doctors. He's …this is the way he was seven months ago and more, the way he was when Mac and I got here! What did we do? What? Great G-d, did I miss some sign this could happen to Jim, again?
Any number of things could have happened to cause this seeming relapse. Miguel replied in kind, getting down from Jemison's shoulder and walking up to the silent figure. Any number of things, which I apparently, utterly failed to note as potential threats to him, whatsoever. Well, here's the result of my arrogant, false confidence in the measures we've already taken! All of them, Major West, the Torrys, and all their brothers are back to being sealed off from us, back to being buried, buried alive, inside his skull.
Friends, Jemison interjected by the same eloquent, silent means. Let's not waste time with blaming ourselves, here. Something, or someone doing something, more like, triggered this state in Torry, in all the Torrys, the first time. And clearly, something's triggered it all over again. And my first, best guess is it has to be something that hasn't come anywhere near my cousin in more than half a year's time. So…
"So what's here, again, now," Artie whispered nodding agreement, when he saw still no reaction to their presence from the child/man. 'that hasn't been here since then? And how did … whatever it is, get here? Any ideas how we find that out, doctors? Because only two people I know of, well, physically speaking, only two, knew what made this happen the first time. And … one of them's a damned, dead madman. And the other's sitting right there, but he may as well be deaf and mute."
Artie sighed, already feeling defeated, but started looking around the playroom for whatever dangerous substance, object or item there had sent Jim reeling backward this way. Badly needing to do something, Artie was feeling, once more, as if he'd been well dusted with itching-powder, the way he'd felt seven months ago. But with Jacques' help and … yes, the small doctor's, there was a clearly discernible difference, now. Now the actor-agent knew this edgy, short-fused, distrustful feeling came from their enemies, from Stephan Aynsley and his damned patterning. And something was niggling at the back of Artie's mind, trying to come through about this, or about a way to find their answers.
Miguel remained sitting quietly beside the blind man, as he had on his own arrival here, months before. Not by sign or sigh or word did the small doctor show his own dejection to the child/man. The Torrys were still in there, and the more he watched the more Miguel saw tell-tales of their presence. They had their own way of fidgeting, in the tiniest possible increments, and that was one of these signals. They canted their heads, his head, towards his right shoulder when they were trying hardest to listen, that was another. And once or twice, perhaps three times, they just barely bit at their lower lips, clearly to keep from 'talkinup", now. As long as they were able to do that, he had hope of disinterring the brothers, young and old alike, once more.
"Torry, don't, now." Miguel soothed him, rubbing the child's back, as he did with Micah Diego, "You're trying so veryiest hard now, not to move a muscle. I know that. And I know you were somehow, told not to move, not to speak, and not to reach for us, again. But you needn't be so veryiest afraid. Truly. You needn't do what the nightmare bids you again, ever."
"He's right, Torry." Artie heard himself fervently telling the child, now, to his own mild surprise. "You don't have to listen to that scaredy, ever, anymore. Remember, remember Torry, how we talked about, how we showed you those liars, those monsters on two legs, are the ones who are truly frightened, truly cowards? Remember how … Miguel told you they want most of all you to be as afraid as they are? Well that's exactly right! Isn't it, Jemmy?"
"That's exactly, exactly right, Cousin." Jemmy agreed, wondering if the children, the Torrys could hear them at all, now. 'so you just listen to Miguel, to 'temus and to me, now, all right? And you come on awake again, just as soon as you're ready."
"That's right, Torry. That's right." Miguel agreed. "We're just going to stay here with you, and do all we can to make sure you know your "guddes Jemmee, an' temusPoppa, an' Mee-Gell are here with you. And somehow we will find the means to protect you, until we are all far away from here, and after! We will take you to a good, quiet, sunny place, Torry. We will take you where you can have fresh air, good food, and clean, safe water, every day. No more dark corners, and no need to hide in them, no more hurts, no more bad an' scaredy mans, ever. Torry, you know, your oldest brother has heard me saying something of this nature a few score, perhaps a few hundred times, by now but I still hold to it. I want a world, a whole, entire, world that is safe for, kind to, open for, comforting to, and at peace for all its children! I always have."
Miguel chuckled, and shrugged a little tiredly. "Well, yes, it's true, sometimes, in the past, I had some… marginally odd notions on how to accomplish that goal. And, well, yes, I did think at one time I should have my grandmother's land grant reestablished. It did seem the logical way to go, at that time, starting a Children's haven, where my own had once been." Miguel heard a pair of very polite, quiet coughs now, and looked up at his colleagues.
Both agents had stopped their search of the playroom to glance at him, and both wore quizzical expressions. They would get no response to their skepticism from the small doctor, he decided. Smiling blandly, Miguel merely nodded and waved at them, somewhat regally, he thought, to indicate they should go back to their business.
"Yes, Torry," he went on addressing only the child/man. "A Children's Haven is still one of my most cherished, determined, long term goals. But I think, instead of some sort of lugubrious grown folks idea of a title, I'll just call it Treasure Island, or as ma cher Antoinette prefers I say it, Isle d' Tresor."
Making a tremendous effort not to giggle somewhat nervously himself, Jemison turned back to searching the playroom, exchanging a wry, still troubled glance with Artie. Careful not to rearrange too much of the makeshift tents and encampments, and not to displace too many of the Torry's play-things, the agents spent the next few hours lifting, looking, shaking and sifting through every puzzle, every pile of the sighted Torrys' drawings, and every tin of his much loved tin soldiers.
Now, Jemmy stopped a moment, smiling at one particular collection of tiny Revolutionary War figures. "These have been his favorites, I think, just lately." The North Carolinian said quietly. 'torry and all of our cousins were raised on stories of the Revolution in the Southern colonies, all about Camden and Charleston, Cornwallis and Gates, Tarleton, and of course, Francis Marion."
"One of the Torrys likes to play out those stories, too. It's not surprising, is it? Everyone around him probably thought they had a budding general on their hands when Jim was growing up."Artie nodded, and then shook off glum thoughts of the trials and changes that "budding general' had gone through. "Where did that tin of tin soldiers come from, Jemmy?"
"Wait, Artie, I was just about to ask you the same thing. You don't know, either?" Jemison asked, frowning, and studying the box more closely.
"I have no idea." Artemus answered. "Doctor, do you know how these tin soldiers got here, or from whom?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, it was delivered less than a week ago. And when I made a point of inquiring, the Administrator's young clerk simply told me it came by post from Virginia. Torry was moping a bit that particular day, running a low-grade temperature, just overnight. But no sooner did he get an idea of what was in that box, than the child, and I'm fairly sure this was the brother named 'torry Sojer", perked up considerably. He grew quite excited and not a little fretful whenever something interrupted his playing with them the rest of that day." Miguel told them, and then grew thoughtful, putting one long hand up to his face, before he went on.
"He spent all the rest of his waking time that day, and the next, playing with these soldiers, to the exclusion of all the others in here, all the puzzles, and all the other toys. They were all he wanted to play with. And he chattered away like a little magpie, telling me the stories he was weaving about them. In fact, Sojer became exceedingly animated, while playing with them. In fact, in comparing his behaviors to Micah Diego's in roughly similar circumstances, meaning when they receive a present or a toy they want very much, or that is for some boyish reason exceedingly important to them, I'd say both boys become almost agitated."
"Agitated?" Jemison echoed, while Artemus kept his own counsel for a moment and listened.
"That's definitely the clinical term I would apply to the same behavior in an adult patient, yes." Miguel nodded.
"But you, yourself, have made a great deal of hay, Doctor, about the idea that we're no longer dealing with an adult … patient or otherwise." Artie pointed out.
"More precisely we're no longer dealing with only an adult named James Torrance Kieran West, Mr. Gordon. Are you now going back to your earlier stance of denying that seminal fact in this case?"
"I'm not going anywhere, Doctor." Artie told him, frowning. "And especially not right now, because I want to know where you're going with that rather odd sounding description of …a little boy playing with a new set of toy soldiers. "
"Well to tell the truth, I was only thinking aloud, just then, merely ruminating, as you might say." Miguel said, not feeling much like a genius at the moment.
Artie sighed again and shook his head. Something, a whole handful of somethings, really, were niggling at the back of his mind about all this. All he needed was some peace and quiet and the time to see how they might fit together. But how much time did they have with Jim and his brothers in this buried state again? The actor-agent feared the answer to that was 'less and less'. And where were all those brothers? Wasn't the whole concept he was still struggling to comprehend that they only existed to begin with to protect and to help their 'oldest' brother deal with the kind of childhood terrors no child should ever have to understand, much leSs'deal with'. So what was going on here? What could have driven all of them, including the ones with all the swagger and reckless, defiant nature that was so much a part of Jim West, into hiding, now? And if they were somehow gone, now, in some way Artemus didn't think he could begin to understand, 'disbanded', how was Jim West going to make it through a repetition of the last seven months?
Artie recalled all too well that he'd been strident in his disbelief regarding Jim's brother-selves. But now he knew that disbelief in anything that might exonerate the younger man, was literally put into his head by Aynsley and company. So, with time and a boost, a well placed jibe, or a swift kick in the pants, now and then from Jacques, Jeremy and Mac, the actor-agent had "come around' to accepting the 'seminal fact' of their existence and their more or leSsbenign purpose. And now he found himself in the odd position of heartily wishing one or more of these alternatives, these brother-selves of his partner, would emerge again.
"C'mon fellas," Artie whispered. "C'mon, just give us some kind of signal, send up some sort of flare, fly a few red flags, maybe to let us know where, besides the inside of my partner's head, you've got off to. And why, yeah, the reason why you left Jim in the lurch, would be nice to know, as well, about now."
While he pondered these things the actor went on with his immediate task, which happened to be searching through a pile of Torry's drawings. These were colorful, childish renditions of yet more soldiers and their accoutrements. Considering the present condition of Jim West's eyes, they were that much more amazing, showing what Artie would have, in other circumstances, called "a fine eye" for motion and rough form. Now, ruefully glancing over his shoulder at a still frozen, still mute, still stone blind Jim West, Artemus Gordon wasn't sure if these pictures dismayed or awed him. Maybe the truth, as it did so often, lay somewhere in between. Now half of the drawings slid off the table and Artie, fuming, bent to them up.
"Fumble-fingers!" the actor mocked himself, and then stopped in the midst of putting the offending artwork back where it came from. A smaller sheet of more finely milled paper, scored like a ledger was sticking about a third of the way out, under another stack of drawings.
"Wait, wait just a moment, here." Artie said, mostly to himself, and pulled the sheet all the way out of its evident hiding place. Writing in lead pencil, in a careful, schoolboy's hand, covered both sides of the sheet. But it wasn't readable at first glance. "What have we here? Jemmy, Doctor, take a look at this, will you?" The actor said and walked back to the two doctors, each of whom now sat dejectedly on either side of Jim.
"It's coded." Jemison noted immediately, while Artie and Miguel nodded in agreement. "But not in any code I know on sight. And what is more, I don't recall seeing any of the Torrys, actually writing. They just don't have those skills yet. They don't have the least idea of handwriting, much less coding. So what's going on here? And don't we already have enough mysteries to solve?"
"This is odd, very odd, indeed." Miguel agreed. "And surely if the brothers wished to encode something for us, for us to find I mean, they would have chosen a more complex cipher than this which is a relatively straightforward reverse-numeric."
"Let me take another look at that." Artie said and did so. 'doctor, you're right, and you're wrong. But don't be disheartened. This is written in a kind of reverse-numeric code, numbers being switched for letters. But, with a second glance, I know Jim… I know one of the brothers wrote this."
"And just how do you know that, Mr. Gordon?" Miguel asked, feeling the way he usually did when Antoinette told him he was being peevish.
"Because I just realized this is written in a code that Jim West showed me when we first met. And at first I just couldn't keep from exclaiming and laughing. And I told Jim this was a perilously decipherable code to be using, especially in wartime, and especially that War, when the enemy had more West Pointers in their ranks than we did. And I meant it, because at first glance this looked to me like a code a plebe fresh in the gate at West Point could break and break into smithereens.
Well, that ruffled the feathers of the West Pointer in our ranks just a bit; he can get pretty touchy about the Military Academy. And I don't doubt all those Southerners heading home, from 'the Point', and pledging themselves to the Southern Cause, before the War started was something of a sore point with men like Jim, and George Thomas, who didn't leave their oaths or their Country behind.
But in typically Westian style, in the next moment Jim laughed right back and told me that first year men, at West Point decades past, actually did invent the code he showed me. And it wasn't just a one-dimensional reverse-numeric by the time he got there. And Jim went on to insist this was a perfectly good code to start with, because by the time he showed it to me, in the fall of "61, nobody was using reverse-numeric codes any longer. And thus no one had the ciphers for them, much less the training to use them."
"And are we to assume that somewhere in that prodigious, eidetic memory of yours, Gordon, the cipher needed for this encoded document still lives and breathes, as it were?" Miguel asked tiredly.
"I'd say we're about to find out, Doctor." Artie said, noting the general petulance of the small doctor was on the rise, again. But where at one time this would have amused, or even delighted the agent, now he found himself not reacting that way at all. Now it merely occurred to him to wonder how much rest de Cervantes had been getting lately. The actor sat next to Jim, now and studied the 'document' intently for several minutes.
Then he pulled a battered leather-bound notebook from his coat pocket and began alternatively leafing through it, reading old entries and making new ones. As this process went on, Artie found himself moving incrementally closer to his partner, out of long habit, he supposed. But then, for the space of an instant, it seemed that Jim was aware enough of his surroundings to take comfort in and lean against his partner's broad shoulder. Jemison watched with a wry half-smile. These partners, all trials and tribulations to the contrary notwithstanding, retained a tacit and inimitable synergy. And that alone had carried them, and oft times the nation, safely through horrendous perils. Now the North Carolinian, who'd been their friend for years couldn't help wondering if the younger partner, Jim West, would ever be consciously aware of that or anything in his world again. The answer to that was looking more and more like a resounding "no".
But we have to keep at it, don't we? Jemmy considered. G-d knows, Torry would do the same for any of his partners, if not a tad bit more for Artemus. Artie tells me, and I have to believe him, knowing Torry, that my cousin has pulled his partners, Jeremy, Frank, Jacques and Artemus' bacon out of the fire on any number of occasions. It just seemed to be what the team of agents Thomas Macquillan and James Richmond put together do! And they'd do it again in a heartbeat. Mac Macquillan and James Richmond made that team happen, surely. But then, this magnet for disaster younger partner came onboard.
And in no time at all, from what they've told me, Torry was the core component of every plan, every mission, and of the team as well. I suppose some folks would only see that as signs of a young man's natural drive, his ambition. That's because they don't know Torry is the least ambitious man in the Secret Service! Well, maybe he's not the least; Thomas likely owns clear title to first place in that category. But Thomas is also, second only to the President, Torry's surrogate father and mentor. So, it's only natural, that working with and serving with those two extraordinary and extraordinarily shy men he admires so much Torry would become almost as self-effacing as they are.
Miguel de Cervantes watched all three men from his own singular perspective. And he tried to be more patient, working hard in fact to hold back his urge to appropriate and decipher for himself this strangely written and yet more strangely arrived 'document'. Everything, except his 'oldest friend', the grinding pain in his joints and spine, a result of some intractable lacking of their cartilage, and his own just-bearable homesickness for Antoinette and Micah, had been progressing well, if slowly. Until less than a few hours ago, a few hours! Now, everything seemed to be set at just the right pitch to fray his already overburdened nerves. The Torrys and their brothers already came through this ordeal of outwardly enforced captivity within their own minds, their own frames, and their own psyches once. Why had they slipped this far back now, this morning? What triggered such a severe withdrawal? The Torrys were still quite young; most of them were pre-literate, in fact.
So, think, de Cervantes, he scolded himself. And think as hard and as fast as you possibly can, which is considerable. What could trigger this level of pure terror in a small boy? It has to be something sensory! It has to be something he touched or tasted or heard or … for those few of the Torrys who remain sighted, something he saw, or smelled, doesn't it? Children of their age are incredibly attuned to, and forcefully prompted by, as regards the world and the people around them, their senses. Well, they have to be, don't they? Add to that all-encompassing fact of human development, and the fact that at least twice in his early childhood, James West's or rather, Torry West's, world was wholly capsized and never entirely righted.
And what you have is a child-mind that was first shattered by his tormentor, and then bereft of its central figure, Jessamyn Anne Randolph West. What you have, what we still have, is a child-mind, a child-spirit so young at the first instance of that torment it could only perceive its world through sight and sound, touch and taste, and scent. Only to have all those mainstays, all those paths to understanding, betrayed so horribly they still are not wholly recovered, thirty two years on! And either that same tormentor, or someone privy to that appalling history, has acted now, here, in the last half-day to turn back seven months of healing. But they may not have succeeded as well as we first thought on seeing the Torrys so mute, so still, again.
"Well, Mr. Gordon? What have you discerned from this inexplicably arrived … paper? Well? I've entirely lost my patience for this!" Miguel demanded.
" Really, Doctor?" Artie, his dark, bright eyes lit with mischief, suddenly couldn't help quipping. 'tell me, where did you last have it?"
"Artemus!" In the absence of their team leader, Jemmy did his best to frown in true 'Macquillan-style, at the actor. But in another moment both he and the small doctor had given in to their weary funny bones. Combine sentences And in the next all three men were laughing so hard it was almost painful. It couldn't last any more than a summer thunderstorm. And like that kind of cloudburst, generated by extremes of heat and cold, it was mostly generated by nerves stretched taut.
"My apologies, doctors." Artie finally managed when he was breathing better. "Now, where were we?"
"This unprovenanced, unlooked for document. The decipherment thereof." Miguel answered, succinctly.
"Well, it seems to be a list, and I think it's possibly a list of names, maybe, from the way …the brothers talk, a kind of roster. But its an odd sort of list, or roster, to say the least. Not that any part of this boondoggle has been ordinary. And part of the oddneSsis that if these are names they're not written down in columns. They're written down as part of what seem to be sentences, except for the first three lines here." Artie took the sheet of what seemed to be ledger paper and spread it out on the nearest "play-table", and next to it, the leaf from his journal he was using to write out his solution.
"Alright, what it seems to be saying at the top on the first side, well the first side if I'm going by the number at the bottom right, is 'the Four" Artie pointed to his 'scratch paper" and back to the encryption. "And then, here's the second line, which seems to be the titles we've heard the Torrys and the others using for themselves. 'littlers or Littles, Defiants or Defenders, Watchers or Witnesses, Veterans' or Old Hands'. And the third line, again in an ordinary document, I'd say these were also titles, or categories, 'tutors, Trustees, Sentinels, Troopers'. And below those three lines, there are… let me … yes, there are forty seven rather run-on sentences."
"Forty-seven!" Jemison echoed. "Great Glory! Can there be that many brothers?"
"If that wasn't a rhetorical question, Jemison, then the answer is decidedly yes. And as we've already seen with the brothers who've made themselves known so far, and if our current…. if Mr. Gordon's current theory proves out, then yes, indeed there forty seven times four!" Miguel answered. "Go on, Mr. Gordon."
"Well, I'm…" Artie stopped, shaking his head. " I'm speculating, in a way here, in the way all code breakers have to. And so…"
"You're not certain, Gordon?" Miguel demanded, frowning. "You don't know what it says?"
"In the sense that I'm not the author here, no, Doctor, I'm not, and no, I don't." Artie admitted. "I'm using the cipher I know, that seems to best fit with the way this document is encrypted. And the only way I would have of being certain in a case like this would be if the author told me so, whoever that is. And at first glance I would have said it was Jim West, who can't even tell if I'm in the room, right now. It's written in a hand somewhat similar to Jim's. But this is definitely more formal, more like a schoolchild's."
"Artie, hold on a minute. Let me look at this again." Jemison asked. 'something is familiar to me, about the way this page is set up. And maybe if I gape at it for another minute… I'll be able to tell you two what I'm half-remembering."
"Be my guest, Jemmy. I'm beginning to think maybe this particular puzzle is more complicated than we imagined." Artie said and stepped aside, to let the North Carolinian physician "gape" at the ledger page again.
"Well, well, Jemison, what's there? What's familiar to you?" Miguel demanded to be told.
"Sorry, Artie, sorry, you were close, but you're wrong here." Jemison finally said, straightening his back and stretching.
"I'm usually willing to stand corrected, Jemmy. Where did I go wrong, exactly?" Artie frowned. It was still somewhat uncomfortable to him, some days more than others, to have the small doctor openly listening to the agent's conversations, and more so when the agents disagreed.
"Well, I don't know how important this point is or isn't. But this isn't a formal roster: It's a watch-rotation schedule, the kind that was posted for every Army encampment during the War. And it's the kind of hand written watch-schedule that still gets posted at every Army post and fort. Or, at least that's the way it looks to my tired eyes. If I'm right, this may be meant to show how the brothers are organized. But how will we know that, if they're all locked up inside Jim again, now? How can we even get started, from just about Square One, again, without … and this sounds odd, even as I say it, without their help?" Jemmy asked.
"But why are they trying to tell us now, today, how they keep watch for their Oldest brother?" Miguel added, frowning in concentration much as Artie was. And then, almost in the same instant, both men laughed and clapped Jemison appreciatively; on his arm in the former case, on his back in the latter.
"They need us to call them up, all of them." Miguel and Artemus said at the same moment and then looked appropriately chagrinned.
"Call them up, as in roll call, as in calling the roster?" Jemison asked.
"That's it, Jemmy. We need to call them, all of them, to report in and get their orders, just as any troop would do after Reveille and before Drills. Something sent all the brothers back into bivouac. And don't ask me, I have no clue how I know that. Combine sentences But I do. And so a roll call just might be what brings them out, again, following what seems to be their quasi-military way of … being. And, in that sense this may be their roster." Artie smiled.
"That being the most likely case, we need to call them up, in the way a troop expects, by reading out their names, reading them exactly as they appear, my friends, on both sides of that ledger paper." Miguel added, craning his neck to look up at Artie. "And yes, by the way, Mr. Gordon, I did just refer to both of you as my friends. And that is surely something to be discussed, or even to be debated, on another day. Shall we simply agree to continue our somewhat less-armed, armed truce for the time being?"
"Certainly, Doctor." Artie nodded, holding back on his urge to bow mockingly to 'the little man'.
"Hey, wait a minute, fellows!" Jemison exclaimed, still looking at Artie's deciphering and the original. "We can't! We can't do this. Don't you see? It's not physically, not even remotely possible!"
"What? Why not?" Artie demanded.
"Yes, whyever not, Jemison?" Miguel asked.
"Because, over the last seven months and a little more, my friends, there's never been a time when we've seen more than one of the brothers at the same time. And I'd have to gueSsthat's because physically speaking, there still is only one Jim West for them to… appear, to emerge from. So, how in the world can we suddenly ask all of them, counting Jim as their Oldest, the way the Torrys do… how can all the rest of them, all at once, "go on stage" as it were? I know, Artie, I know, I'm always the spoilsport around here, aren't I?" Jemison groused.
"Only when I don't get there first, my friend." Artie quipped. " And only when neither Mac Macquillan nor Colonel Richmond push ahead of me. Well, we're stymied again. And we can't be! Jim and … his brothers can't afford for us to cave, especially not now. So we need to get creative here, we need to be a whole lot more imaginative."
"And I concur, for which breach of our agreement to disagree, I will apologize later, Mr. Gordon. We can't be tied down by conventional, commonplace considerations. The Torrys and their brothers are, after all, to be somewhat clinical about it, a number, an array if you will, of bio-chemical, neuro-psychological processes and responses to very adverse stimuli, within their original, their Oldest's, mind. And clearly, they are also entirely discrete and psychologically self-aware whole entities, who do not and at this late date, likely will not cease to exist merely because we do not, or more precisely, we cannot ourselves always perceive them. And we have all seen these processes, these responses, these entities, flow into one another like tributary streams flowing into a river.
Moreover, I think it's clear that we have all seen these brother-selves on numerous occasions for some years before they allowed us to consciously encounter them. Therefore, I believe them to be perfectly capable of communicating with us by other means than their more practiced self-expression through Major West's physiology. That being said, there is no question in my mind that Mr. Gordon only found this list, this watch-rotation, today as a result of the brother's otherwise thwarted means of making contact. And he found it while we were all searching our minds and memories and this room, for something to aid Major West and his brothers through this new crisis." Miguel offered, going back to sit next to Jim.
"I'd add that the Torrys who made those drawings very proudly showed me each and every sheet they'd used in the last fortnight or more. And so I am positive there was no ledger sheet, no rotation, and no roster amongst them, until today. And all those factors simply do not allow for the effects and causes of mere coincidence. What we have here is plainly a message in a bottle, gentlemen. I strongly suggest we take full, swift advantage of it, in order to get the Torrys and their brothers off this ostensible desert island!"
"And the risks, Miguel?" Jemison asked, looking glumly at the small doctor. "What are we doing about the risks of trying this, that we neither know, nor understand, yet? Are you saying we're just going to, to continue your analogy, blithely sail past them, my friend?"
"No, not at all. I'm saying we have no other choice than to risk the breakers, and the rocks in the harbor, the jetties, the coral, and the stingrays, and the possibility of drowning, now, my friend. The 'risk" of doing nothing at this juncture would mean not only becoming complicit ourselves in what our enemies wish to accomplish. No, it would mean sitting back now, today, and watching the brothers, all the brothers die, within a prison of their worst enemy's making. A prison that was fashioned when they were very, very young, from their minds, their hearts, their memories, their spirits, and their very physiology! And I have no more intention of allowing that, of doing that than you, or Artemus, Thomas, Jacques, or any of our allies. Which is to say, this we cannot and we will not allow."
"No, by all that's holy, we won't!" Jemison nodded. "I don't suppose either of you two 'old seafarers' are as scared about this as I am?"
"Petrified, would be a better way to put how much I'm scared, right now, Jemmy." Artie told him, putting one hand on the North Carolinian's shoulder.
"Chary." Miguel responded, earning another pair of skeptical glances; one hazel eyed from Jemmy and one deep brown from Artemus. "Well, gentlemen, shall we take our turns at this calling of the roll? Mr. Gordon, you earned pride of place, having found the "bottle". You should begin."
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