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The Words of Master Emrett
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Off Bronze went at last, and left the forest feeling rather breathless. He seemed capable of an endless stream of walking, however tired he might be. After entering the room and asking for the other boy's room number, Bronze went upstairs and found himself in a small and cozy room. There was a bit of bright fire burning on the hearth, and in front of it were some low and comfortable chairs. There was a round table, already spread with a white cloth, and on it was a large hand-bell. Jake had evidently rung it. There was an electric lamp on the table and two plates with loaves of sweetbread. Jake had already eaten his share.
When Bronze told Jake told him about his dealings with Linda the latter started rather violently. "You fool! Getting yourself into trouble on day one and exposing us to the enemy! What were you bloody well thinking, going to that district like you did?"
"I will now be more cautious," said Bronze. "Without this lesson the later harm could have been much worse. Arceus was gracious enough to get prudence into my head early rather than late. But we must be going. The enemy—the Eclipse Alliance—will soon be at the doorstep."
They set out north that morning and bribed the gate-guard to let them pass unmarked. It was eighty more miles north till they came to Silvent City by magnet train. This was speedy and pleasant. The train system was built nearly two decades before as part of the initiatives of the first Chairman of Roria to civilize the southern provinces and bring knowledge and supplies further over the realm. They also ferried munitions and men during the Terramist War. The rails were cooled to nearly absolute zero to decrease friction, so one had to find their person when crossing the live tracks. By noon the two were in the city limits.
Perhaps the most perfect form of the semi-major metropolis, or any large city, is to be seen in Silvent. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a quiet and gradual nature in the vicinity, not requiring those periodic seasons of hurry and pressure that are called for in the various businesses of more northern districts, makes the task of the average city-dweller a more healthful and reasonable one; while the elites, content with a more gradual style of acquisition through the soil around, has not those temptations to hardheartedness which always overcome frail human nature when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain is weighed in the balance, with no heavier counterpoise than the interests of the helpless and unprotected.
Whoever visits some office buildings there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some members of the rat race (that upon completing the runner remains a rat), might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a being and beneficial lifestyle and institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow—the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to one entity, so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest overlord, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of urban life.
Outside of the train station was an open commons plaza with a big portable stage in the center. The gathering around was large and mixed, as Bronze discovered, when his eyes got used to the light. Pyrotechnic effects were creating blazing gas-fires from stainless steel tubes around the back of the plinth. There was a podium with golden braziers standing like wardens at its left and right, causing a haze of smoke that dimmed the stage. Orange and black-clad men were standing near the stage, talking to a couple of Rorians and one or two strange-looking Pokemon. On the benches that had been set out before the stage were various folk: men of Roria, a collection of Kantorim schoolgirls (sitting chattering together), a few more uniformed men, and other vague figures difficult to get a read on.
The benches were all filled and some few hundred people were standing around the seats and the stage, waiting for the speaker's coming. Steetlamps had hanging from them several fluttering banners with an orange crescent moon nearly well eclipsed by a black oval. These were the signs and standards of the Eclipse Alliance, and none but by them were they used. "Ho!" Jake said when he met the outer fringes of the crowd. "What are we waiting for?"
At this a chorus of voices broke out. If Bronze and Jake wanted to write a book, and had had many ears, they would have learned enough for several chapters in a few minutes. The one thing they did not learn was the identity of the speaker. And if that was not enough, they was given a whole list of names, beginning with "Old Captain Kett here" to whom he could go for further information. But after a time, as Bronze and Jake did not show any sign of going to Captain Kett on the spot, those crowded around did not become any more communicative.
"Why, I know what this is," said Bronze as the crowd began to part near the stage to allow someone on. "It was in the papers. There was to be a rally for Team Eclipse in Silvent City this very day. The devils! But I want to see what their selling pitch is."
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Soon he got a look at who was behind the podium. It was a tall man with no age, fit with straight black hair like waterfalls, the same Emrett that Bronze had seen his dream. In the vision he had thought Emrett cold and cruel, but in person the man gave a different impression. There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think—and you would be right. It was the face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated a horrible handsome warmth, a face to make water glasses shatter in the hands of tired truck-stop waitresses, to make small children crash their trikes into board fences and then run wailing to their mommies with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees. It was a face guaranteed to make barroom arguments over batting averages turn bloody. He was an immensely predatory figure.
This perception of Emrett was only obscurely knowable. He concealed it very well. Any other observer would have sworn, at least for a moment, that Emrett displayed excellent observable qualities. It would have been a great crudity to insist otherwise. The Sorcerer Supreme was a master of the demonic arts and a devoted servant of the Great Djinn. The magic that he used, what was had in those times, is not, you see, something from the antiquity period. It is the last vestige, surviving into the period of antiquity, of something much more remote. Something that came down from long before the Ruin of Old Kalos, even from before primitive Druidism; something that takes all the way back to the Outer Dark, to pre-glacial periods. This meddling was very hazardous and did horrors for Emrett's sanity.
If you are wondering what Emrett was doing in the moments that he would be, supposedly, interrogating Robert and Lily, the answer is that the interrogation had not actually begun yet. Bronze's parents were ten miles away in an Eclipse supply depot and soon Emrett would return. It made no difference to the Mad Parson that it should be later rather than sooner if he would gain new souls for the Great Djinn's House Below.
I will now write the words of Emrett that I heard all those years ago. There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. The sort of script which is used in this section can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but ill-disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me.
Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Emrett says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle. I have made no attempt to rationalize his words on any of the human beings mentioned in his speech; but I think it very unlikely that the portraits, say, of the Rorian Chairman's policies or Natural Harmonia Gropius are wholly just. There is wishful thinking in the minds of those in Hell as well as on Earth.
"Men of Roria," said Emrett, "we salute you! But if I were to go on explaining things to you, would that not be a trifle naive? You people are used to having dozens of opposing philosophies in your heads at once. We do not suppose that argument is the way to bring you to the light. That might have been so if we had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proven and when it was not; and if it was proven they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons the Association has largely altered that. Your average man doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is the Association's best ally in keeping you away from us. That's why they don't waste time telling you what's true or not! Make a man think they are strong, or stark, or courageous—that is the philosophy of the Association. That's the sort of thing they want you to care about."
Several planted stooges in the audience began to clap and the clapping spread quicker than Bronze could have imagined. The real reason why is that he was not very affected by Emrett's magical voice. It was strong and vibrant, its very sound like a spell. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. It was mostly "jargon" as Emrett himself said. But it seemed wise and reasonable and high-brow, so that those who listened seemed happy at their own ability to understand it, or thinking that they understood it, and those that gainsaid its message became neanderthals, waifs, fools. Some only at the first words were enthralled, and those heard that voice from far-off for the rest of their lives, urging them softly toward some secret purpose. None could wholly reject it at first, none could be completely unmoved without an effort of mind and body to first resist. Jake saw a philosopher king pontificating to his subjects on matters above their merit and understanding. Bronze heard an old lair with honey on his forked tongue.
"But you certainly won't fall for their tricks, good friends. No, in seeing enough life as all you have, your minds have come into possession of that inarticulate sense of actuality which is your surest protection against the aberrations of mere logic. What do we do against this? I will tell you. And what of Pokemon as well? I will also reveal that. First I will address the present and unwholesome state of our treatment of Pokemon. This is justified because existence is its own justification. The tendency to developmental change which we call Pokemon Evolution is justified by the fact that it is a general characteristic of those biological entities. The present establishment of contact between the highest biological entities and the Pokemon is justified by the fact that it is occurring, and it ought to be increased because an increase is taking place. Because of that we stand against the idealistic peddling of Natural Harmonia Gropius and his operators at Team Plasma, who advocated a decrease in these relations.
"There is no sense in asking whether the general tendency of our policies toward Pokemon would be in the direction we call Bad. There could be no sense at all. The judgment that is trying to make turns out on inspection to be simply an expression of emotion. Ghetsis himself could only express it by using emotive terms such as "gladiatorial" or "ruthless." I am referring to the famous Castelia City lecture. When the so-called struggle for existence is seen simply as an actuarial theorem, we have, in Cyrus of Team Galatic's words, "a concept as unemotional as a definite integral" and the emotion disappears. With it disappears that preposterous idea of an external standard of value that the emotion produced.
"And, you ask, the actual tendency of events would still be self-justified and in that sense 'good' when it was working for Team Eclipse's own motivations? Of course, if you insist on formulating the problem in those terms. In reality the question is meaningless. It presupposes a means—and—end pattern of thought that descends from the ancient philosophers, who in their turn were merely hypostatizing elements in the experience of an iron-age agricultural community. Motives are not the causes of action but their by-products. You are merely wasting your time by considering them. When you have attained real objectivity you will recognize, not some motives, but all motives as merely animal, subjective epiphenomena. You will then have no motives and you will find that you do not need them. Their place will be supplied—by something else which you will presently understand better than you do now. So far from being impoverished your action will become much more efficient.
"And that is why systematic training in our ideology must be given to you. Its purpose is to eliminate from your mind one by one the things you have hitherto regarded as grounds for action. It is like killing a nerve. That whole system of instinctive preferences, whatever ethical, aesthetic, or logical disguise they wear, is to be simply destroyed. Tolerance is the ground for Team Eclipse.
"We are, I am sorry to say, Anti-Arcean. They produce a sense of ownership, which does not exist, not only by pride but by confusion. They teach children not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun, the finely graded differences that run from 'my boots' through 'my dog', 'my servant', 'my wife', 'my father', 'my master' and 'my country', to 'my God'. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of 'my boots', the 'my' of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by 'my Teddy-bear' not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Arceans will prevent us from teaching them to mean if we are not careful) but 'the bear I can pull to pieces if I like'. And at the other end of the scale, they have taught men to say 'My God' in a sense not really very different from 'My boots', meaning 'The Arceus on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit—the Arceus I have done a corner in.' We are against them because of the weight of apostasy, the shame of orthodox hypocrisy, and their intolerant doctrines.
"What can be done to correct the abuses of Men to Pokemon and Men to Men? It is a justified quest, but is it achievable? No, not realistically so. Any time that someone utters the falsehood that human nature is perfectible, that we are really good, and with proper educational and societal conditioning we can create some ridiculous hedonistic utopia is being too hopeful. While this is not in principle unachievable, the science and eugenics behind the scheme would be unpleasant and long in the doing, perhaps many thousands of years, and the human race will destroy itself far longer before then. To address this issue of practicality the Eclipse Alliance has looked outside of the capabilities of Man and found help in the supernatural.
"Do not laugh! Spirits are real and their qualities plainly observed in several kinds of Pokemon. But how is it the case that you have had no communication with these beings? It is not certain that we have not. But in primitive times it was spasmodic, and was opposed by numerous prejudices. Moreover, the intellectual development of man had not reached the level at which intercourse with our species could offer any attraction to a spirit. But though there has been little intercourse, there has been a profound influence. Their effect on human history has been far greater than that of the microbes, though, of course, equally unrecognized. In the light of what we now know, all history will have to be rewritten. The real causes of all the principal events are quite unknown to historians; that, indeed, is why history has not yet succeeded in becoming a science."
"Sir!" one of the Kantoian women called. She was out of place in the bunch to Bronze's eye. Against the popular clothes of the day that made women so like boys in dress that there was little difference save for undergarments, this woman seemed to represent all traditional Kantoian beauty. She was wearing a kimono and headband in the old style with designs stitched in their weaving that suggested organic growths. He vaguely recognized her as a far-removed Gym Leader. "Are these organisms friendly to you? Is that why you get their help?"
"If you reflect for a moment, Erika of Celadon City," said Emrett, and the woman gave a small start at him saying her name, "you will see that your question has no meaning except on the level of the crudest popular thought. Friendship is a chemical phenomenon; so is hatred. Both of them presuppose organisms of our own type. The first step towards intercourse with the spirits is the realization that one must go outside the whole world of our subjective emotions. It is only as you begin to do so, that you discover how much of what you mistook for your thought was merely a by-product of your blood and nervous tissues."
"Oh, of course, sir," said Erika. "I didn't quite mean, 'friendly,' in that sense. I really meant, are their aims compatible with your own?"
"What do you mean by our aims?"
"Well, I suppose the scientific reconstruction of the human race in the direction of increased efficiency, the elimination of war and poverty and other forms of waste, a fuller exploitation of Nature, the preservation and extension of our species, in fact."
"I do not think this pseudo-scientific language really modifies the essentially subjective and instinctive basis of the ethics you are describing. I will return to the matter at a later stage, if you wish to talk to me. For the moment, I would merely remark that your view of war and your reference to the preservation of the species suggest a profound misconception. They are mere generalizations from affectional feelings."
"Surely," said Erika, "one requires a pretty large population for the full exploitation of Nature, if for nothing else? And surely war is disgenic and reduces efficiency? Even if population needs thinning, is not war the worst possible method of thinning it?"
"That idea is a survival from conditions that are rapidly being altered. A few centuries ago, war did not operate in the way you believe. A large agricultural population was essential, and war destroyed types that were then still useful. But every advance in industry and agriculture reduces the number of work-people who are required. A large, unintelligent population is now becoming a deadweight. The real importance of scientific war is that scientists have to be reserved. It was not the great technocrats of Anthien City or Castelia who supplied the casualties in the siege of Rosecove: it was superstitious eastern Rorian peasants and low-grade agricultural workers. The effect of modern war is to eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold upon public affairs. In the new age, what has hitherto been merely the intellectual nucleus of the race is to become, by gradual stages, the race itself. You are to conceive the species as an animal that has discovered how to simplify nutrition and locomotion to such a point that the old complex organs and the large body that contained them are no longer necessary. That large body is therefore to disappear. Only a tenth part of it will now be needed to support the brain. The individual is to become all head. The human race is to become all Technocracy."
"Then the Terramist War and the near-disasters that took place over the last twenty years are not troubling, in your view?"
"On the contrary, they were simply the beginning of the program—the first few of the forty-three major wars that are scheduled to take place in this century, or so I am told." Emrett winked. "I am aware of the emotional (that is, the chemical) reactions that a statement like this produces in you, and you are wasting your time in trying to conceal them from me. I do not expect you to control them. That is not the path to objectivity. I deliberately raise them in order that you may become accustomed to regard them in a purely scientific light and distinguish them as sharply as possible from the facts. This was enlightening and I hope to continue our association together once you are under my employ.
"Now for our solution. To recruit the aid of these spirits is the first step that has brought us closer to an objective which, I will frankly say, involves the mass and total restructuring of the world's observed physical and sociological laws. This may seem at first glance the process whereby all specifically human reactions are killed in a man so that he might become fit for the fastidious society of the spirits. Higher degrees in the asceticism of anti-Nature would doubtless follow: the eating of abominable food, the dabbling in dirt and blood, the ritual performances of calculated obscenities. Perish this assumption! Our walking-out of nature is a very benign one. She is the ladder that is erected to support us and once we reach the pinnacle of the evolutionary pole, higher than the highest anthropoids, that ladder will be cast aside.
"This will happen very rapidly. Already our high administration, which I am a part of, has devised a plan for it. There will be a new creation, a new heaven and new earth, that will be unimaginably paradisal. All the hurdles of human imperfection that arose due to the process of natural selection should perish because they will be no longer needful. This gift, through education and the new natural laws (there must be a few), will extend the power of Technocracy to all of humanity. Of course, there must be Controllers. The Controllers, then, are to choose what kind of society they will, for their own good reasons, produce in the Human race. They are the motivators, the creators of motives. These Controllers will be from the ranks of our own Team Eclipse.
"Our difficulty in choosing what to do with all of mankind will not be hard. We might suppose that it was possible to say: 'After all, most of us want more or less the same things—food and drink and sexual intercourse, amusement, art, science, and the longest possible life for individuals and for the species.' Let these Controllers simply say, 'This is what we happen to like, and go on to condition men in the way most likely to produce it.' It will be an abolition of all irrationality in favor of Elysium. To that no objection can be found.
"The Association is, being imperfect, a major obstacle in our plans. But we will conquer it. Who, then, among the wise will accept this calling, this duty? For what wisdom and glory is to impel the few, the benevolent few, to scorn delights and live laborious days in order that others, and posterity, may have what they like? Their duty? But that is only the remnants of old thought, which they may decide to impose on all else, but which cannot be valid for them. If they accept it, then they are no longer the makers of conscience but still its subjects, and their final conquest over Nature has not really happened. The preservation of the species? But why should the species be preserved? One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not.
"The only motive available is the instinctual desire for dominion. There is a sentiment that domination over those lesser in natural standing, and lesser in intelligence, is a bad thing. It is a very beneficial thing if power is concerned. That is what Team Eclipse offers: an executive treatment to becoming a god. This offer is free and equal-opportunity. We shall reach our goal of tolerance, tolerance of all but those who refuse to bow to our creed. Who will join? Come and stand beside me! It is also only fair that I offer proof of my role, in addition to what you have already seen and heard. I call on the power of my most high Lord to prove that he rules from Deep Heaven by commanding fire to fall from the sky!"
Emrett raised his arms, and then a chill wind began. The sky darkened with sudden rolling storm clouds. "I saw the Great Djinn fall like lightning from heaven!" Emrett cried, and then he pointed toward an empty place in the plaza. Great beams of fire burst from the heavens and blackened the stones. The seven or so people near the fire leaped from their skins in terror, and even the Eclipse guards backpedaled.
The reversal of natural behavior that Emrett displayed was not spectacular or dramatic to Bronze at all. He assumed that some hidden Pokemon was causing the fire from heaven. That was not the case. If I wrote what exactly Emrett had done the details would be unprintable and had, indeed, a kind of nursery fatuity about them which is best ignored. When looking at the scorch marks on the plaza Bronze felt that one good roar of coarse laughter would have blown away the whole atmosphere of the thing. It was obviously a false miracle, but laughter was unhappily out of the question. There indeed lay the horror: for Emrett to perform petty parlor tricks that a very silly child might have thought funny all under the unchangingly serious theme that he was trying to seduce people to the Darkness.
"I invite you to join," said Emrett. The gathered were so stunned that they merely stared. "Come and join. Cleave to your lord the Spirit-Force, the Bright Evening Star. For among our masters is the Great Djinn, the Giver of Freedom, the Lord of Gifts, and he shall give rest to the weary."
Number by number people came from the benches and among those standing to the stage, some running wildly as if pursued. Bronze saw that all the Kantorim girls but the one with the boldness to question Emrett had joined the Eclipse Alliance. Bronze pulled Jake away and went slowly east. Emrett was shaking hands and congratulating new members and telling them where they were to be stationed. "Get out before he sees us," Bronze said. On the plinth, generous salaries were promised and favors given. In the end thirty souls had joined the Eclipse Alliance and were now on the road to Hell.
"He's speaking nonsense," said Bronze as they walked. "But his talk is good. This is worse than I first feared. They're not being childish with this pitch. No! It is jargon, but that is what Emrett said he was relying on, not reason. Can't they see it's all nonsense? Emrett's just keeping them fed hazy on words and ideas of Progress and Development and the Historical Point of View, and I suppose he's going to give them a bunch of modern biographies. You see the idea? Keep someone's mind off the antithesis between 'True' and 'False.' Nice shadowy expressions: tolerance, species, Nature, Technocracy, and that blessed word 'spirit.' Demons, more like it!"
"The things he said sounded awful like what you talk with Cypress about," said Jake. "You don't see anything in it?"
"Not at all! I need to be off to that Gym, you know. The Alliance is deep in this City and we must get out of it as soon as possible. Think about what he said, Jake. You cannot be tolerant if nine-tenths of the human population is useless. I hoped you would see that already."
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Robert did not know where he was. There was no way of making certain. He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain. Concealed lamps flooded it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming sound which he supposed had something to do with the air supply. A bench, or shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a clean lavatory pan with no wooden seat. There were four holoscreens one on each wall.
There was a dull aching in his belly. It had been there ever since they had bundled him out of the closed van and dragged him away. But he was also hungry, with a gnawing, unwholesome kind of hunger. It might be twenty-four hours since he had eaten, it might be thirty-six. He still did not know, probably never would know, whether it had been morning or evening when they arrested him. Since he was kidnapped he had not been fed.
It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought him here. The dull pain in his belly never went away, but sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly. When it grew worse he thought only of the pain itself, and of his desire for food. When it grew better, panic took hold of him. There were moments when he foresaw the things that would happen to him with such actuality that his heart galloped and his breath stopped. He felt the smash of truncheons on his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he saw himself groveling on the floor, screaming for mercy through broken teeth. And he thought of Lily. He could not take his mind off her. He loved her and would not betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. She was not in his cell and he wondered what happened to her. He thought oftener of Bronze, with a flickering hope. Bronze might know form Cypress that he had been taken. Cypress alone could not protect Bronze. But there was a possibility that he was alive, and alright.
Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of porcelain bricks in the walls of the cell. It should have been easy, but he always lost count at some point or another. More often he wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside, and at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In this place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned out. It was the place with no darkness, it was a place full of darkness. His cell might be at the heart of the building or against its outer wall; it might be ten floors below ground, or thirty above it. He moved himself mentally from place to place, and tried to determine by the feeling of his body whether he was perched high in the air or buried deep underground.
Boots were approaching. The door opened. Emrett came in.
"You again!" Robert said.
Emrett stepped aside. Beside him to the right was a broad-chested guard with a long black truncheon in his hand, and tot he left a Beheeyem. "Yes, me."
Robert knew it was Emrett who was directing everything. He was not the leader of this organization, but he had free leave over Robert's interrogation. It was he who could set the guards on to Robert and who could prevent them from killing him. It was he who would decide when Robert should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, and when drugs should be pumped into his arm. It was he who would ask the questions and suggest the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend. And once—Robert could not remember whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in a moment of wakefulness—a voice murmured in his ear: "Don't worry, Robert; you are in my keeping. The turning-point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect."
Emrett was looking down at him gravely and rather sadly. His face, seen from below, looked thin and worn, with raccoon pouches under the eyes and tired slender veins running from nose to chin. He was older than Robert had thought him; he looked perhaps forty but was in reality much more ancient. By how many years? He could not tell. Under Emrett's hand there was a dial with a lever on top and figures running round the face.
Without any warning except a slight movement of Beheeyem's bulb-covered hand, a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening pain, because he could not see what was happening, and he had the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to him. He did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether the effect was psychically produced; but his body was being wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought the sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose, trying to keep silent as long as possible.
"You are afraid," said Emrett, watching his face, "that in another moment something is going to break. Your special fear is that it will be your backbone. You have a vivid mental picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid dripping out of them. That is what you are thinking, is it not, Robert?"
The wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had come. "The numbers of this dial correspond to Beheeyem's psionic intensity. That was fifty. You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. Do you understand that?"
"Yes," said Robert.
Emrett's manner became less severe. He resettled his robes thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down. When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and persuade rather than to punish.
"I am taking trouble with you, Robert," he said, "because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make. Even now, I am well aware, that you are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. Who is Arceus?"
"Last I knew, Arceus was God."
"Good. And Arceus is the only god, is He not? The truth, please, Robert. Your truth. Tell me what you think you know."
"Yes. Arceus is the only god."
"If we do not serve Arceus, then what do we serve?"
"I don't know. The world. A false version of Arceus."
"No. We serve the Great Djinn, the Spirit-Force. I do not really belive it is necessary to keep you ignorant of our leaders. That question, at least for the present phase of your rehabilitation, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. Our masters are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When humans disbelieve in their existence they lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in them, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalize and mythologize human science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in the Great Djinn, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in Arceus. The 'Life Force', the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls 'Forces' while denying the existence of 'spirits,' then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. The fact that devils are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination has helped us. If any faint suspicion of our master's existence begins to arise in a human mind, we suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in evil spirits."
"Wait, you know that you're evil?" said Robert, dumbfounded and curious. "You admit that you serve evil creatures? Demons?"
"Before going on," said Emrett, "I must ask you to be strictly objective. Resentment and fear are both chemical phenomena. Our reactions to one another are chemical phenomena. Social relations are chemical relations. No, there is not only a material world, there is a supernatural one, but the material world regarding the brain is what must be understood as dominant. You must observe these feelings in yourself in an objective manner. Do not let them distract your attention from the facts. There is no Evil. This has been your greatest failing thus far; believing that you are somehow in the moral right. You have justified your actions because you were doing good, and the enemy was doing evil. You never stopped to consider decisions, Robert, and why people make them."
"But you said that there were evil spirits! Clearly that means something to you!"
"I do not remember saying that."
Robert's heart sank. That was contradictory thinking holding two ideas in opposition to be true at the same time. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that Emrett was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that Emrett had really forgotten his own words. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.
Emrett was looking down at him speculatively.
"What does my religion have to do with this?"
"Nothing," said Emrett. "We have Arceans in our ranks. Team Eclipse accepts all creeds and beliefs. We are unitarian. I will admit that our Master has special issues with your form of simple Arceanism. The real trouble about the set that your family and church is living in is that it is merely Arcean. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Arceanism. What we want, if men become Arceans at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call 'Arceanism And'. You know: Arceanism and the Crisis, Arceanism and the New Psychology, Arceanism and the New Order, Arceanism and Faith Healing, Arceanism and Psychical Research, Arceanism and Vegetarianism, Arceanism and Spelling Reform. If they must be Arceus-followers let them at least be Arcean-followers with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself in some Fashion with an Arcean coloring. We want to work on the horror of the Same Old Thing."
Emrett paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.
"You found a particular object at the Mitis Town archeological dig site several days ago. Our informants know this but we are not able to discern the nature of this discovery. We were also unable to extract it subconsciously through our plants and sleeper agents in casual conversation with you or your son. The Great Djinn wants it, nothing but a trifle that he fancies, but he is unusually impatient. What is this object and where is it currently held?"
"I'll never tell."
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Robert's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. The Beheeyem watched him, its hand still extended. Emrett drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased
"Where?"
"Never!"
The needle went up to sixty.
"Where is it, Robert?"
"I won't tell! We made ourselves forget! What else can I say?"
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The narrow, stern face of Emrett and Beheeyem's three flashing bulbs filled his vision. The odd pseudo-fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably three.
"Where is it, Robert?"
"Never! Stop it! Stop it! How can you go on? Never! Never!"
"Where is it, Robert?"
"Silvent City! Silvent City! Silvent City!"
"No, Robert, that is no use. You are lying. You still know where it really is. Where is it, please?"
"Silvent City! Pallet Town! Shalour City! Anything you like. I'll never tell!"
Abruptly he was sitting up with Emrett's arm around his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The psychic bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to Emrett like a baby, curiously comforted by the thin arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that Emrett was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was Emrett who would save him from it.
"You are a slow learner, Robert," said Emrett gently. "Again."
The pain flowed into Robert's body. The needle must be at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were still there, and still three. All that mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. Emrett had drawn back the lever.
"Robert, this is futile. I could have already produced the desired results with a number of psychic techniques that my Beheeyem has learned. I could have you yielded any information that I want. I could order you to stop breathing. I could bring your wife in here and force her to give me sexual favors while you watched. But I don't, because you are so very valuable, so very useful. The Great Djinn wants you. It's not easy to become sane."
"I will never tell you no matter what you do. Perhaps I will go mad and will not even be able to look at you. But I will not be able to look at Arceus Himself once I am dead if I tell you where it is."
"Again," said Emrett.
Perhaps the needle was eighty—ninety. Robert could not intermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of Beheeyem bulbs seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between two and three and four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable bulbs, like moving suns and stars, were still streaming past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.
"Where is it, Robert?"
"I don't know. I won't tell. You will kill me if you do that again. Silvent, Pallet, anything else, in all honesty I don't know."
Emrett was bending over Robert. His face looked enormous because of its nearness, and hideously evil because it was seen from below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation, a lunatic intensity. Again Robert's heart shrank. If it had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the bench. He felt certain that Emrett was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantonness. At this moment, however, Emrett turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then he said less vehemently:
"You want to die and see Arceus, I understand. The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions of the past. They were failures. They set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the church heads killed their enemies in the open, and killed them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the priest who burned him.
"Later, in this century, there were the totalitarians, as they were called. There was the Unovan Team Plasma and the Kalosi Team Flare. Team Plasam persecuted heresy more cruelly than any others had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to a public trial, for crimes against Pokemon or whatever drivel, they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy.
And yet after only a few months the same thing had happened over again. The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity or Arceus will vindicate you, Robert. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed. Whatever evil you do will become your character and then what will Arceus think of you? There is no life after death. That is why we call it death, because it is un-life. Perish your hopes and silly dreams."
"Then why bother to torture me?" thought Robert, with a momentary bitterness. Emrett checked his step as though Robert had uttered the thought aloud. His loathsome face came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.
"You are thinking," he said, "that since we intend to destroy you and your wife utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallest difference—in that case, why do we go to the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were thinking, was it not?"
"Yes."
"We do not want to kill you, we only want to remove you. This abduction and interrogation in your treatment have been part of a planned program with a well-defined end in view. It is a discipline through which everyone is passed before admission to the Leadership."
"I don't quite see the purpose of it," Robert said aloud.
"It is, again, to promote objectivity. A circle bound together by subjective feelings of mutual confidence and liking would be useless. Those, as I have said are chemical phenomena. They could all in principle be produced by drugs. You have been made to pass through a number of conflicting feelings about our organization and others in order that your future association with us may not be based on feelings at all. In so far as there must be social relations between members of the circle it is, perhaps, better that they should be feelings of dislike. There is less risk of their being confused with the real nexus."
"My future association?" Robert asked, feeling a tremulous rage.
"Yes," said Emrett. "You have been selected as a possible candidate for admission. If you do not gain admission, or if you reject it, it will be necessary to destroy you. I am not, of course, attempting to work on your fears. They only confuse the issue. The process would be quite painless, and your present reactions to it are inevitable physical events."
"It seems a rather bold decision for you to tell me this," said Robert.
"That is merely a proposition about the state of your own body at the moment. If you please, I will go on to give you the necessary information. I must begin by telling you that neither I, nor the human officer I report to, are responsible for shaping the policy of the organization."
"The spirits?" said Robert.
"Yes. Sometimes the cerebral cortex and vocal organs of the leader we call the Hood are used by a different mind. That is the Great Djinn speaking."
"If this Great Djinn is so smart, then why would he have me selected for admission?" said Robert. "I'm disloyal."
"For now. You are a flaw in the pattern we are trying to make, Robert. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation.
"In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victims of the Terramist and Team Plasma purges could carry rebellion locked up in their skull as they walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out or supplant it. The command of the old despotisms was 'Thou shalt not'. The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt'. Our command is 'THOU ART'. No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even your miserable wife has already been made sane. I took part in herinterrogation myself. I saw her gradually worn down, whimpering, groveling, weeping—and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with her she was only a shall of a human. There was nothing left in her except sorrow for what she had done, and love of the Eclipse Alliance. It was touching to see how she loved us. She begged to be shot quickly, so that she could die while her mind was still clean."
He was lying, Robert thought. Emrett's voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretending, thought Robert, he is not a hypocrite, he believes every word he says. Luckily it didn't have to be true. What most oppressed him was the consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. Emrett was a being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had, or could have, that Emrett had not long ago known, examined, and rejected. His mind contained Robert's mind. But in that case how could it be true that Emrett was mad? It must be he, Robert, who was mad.
This thought was easy to entertain. The fact that it was almost completely horrible did not in the least diminish its attraction. Nothing that lacked the tang of horror would have been quite strong enough to satisfy the delirious excitement that now set Robert's temples hammering. It came into his mind that Emrett knew all about this excitement, and also about the opposite determination, and reckoned securely on the excitement as something which was certain to carry the day in his victim's mind.
Emrett halted and looked down at him. His voice had grown stern again.
"Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Robert, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life in thralldom, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
"Fine," said Robert. "Torture me. Do what you want. But I will never tell."
"Most would have already failed at this point," said Emrett. "There is another way I can gain your cooperation. I will allow you to first ask any question before I use it."
"Where is Lily?"
Emrett smiled again. "She betrayed you, Robert. Immediately—unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her Arceus-mindedness—everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case."
"You're lying, aren't you?"
Emrett left this unanswered. "You have a son. He is in Silvent City. We will not kill him if you do not cooperate: we will melt and process him. Then, once it is done, he will be yielded to you, or whatever remains of him. This sight will drive you insane. But on my truth, I will keep him unharmed, if I am not ordered otherwise. Tell us where it is."
Robert did not want Bronze to be tormented because of his own stupidity. He should have realized earlier that the struggle was no longer the preservation of his secret: it was the preservation of his eternal soul. These were devourers, conquerers that he had been taken by. "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Anything, even the ceding of the information to the enemy, must be done rather than have Bronze harmed.
"The object is a runic bottle with a toroid design at the base. We observed, ah, the entity that was inside. Certainly, no one opened it. I petitioned the Association to have it stored away. It was taken and brought to an Association supply outpost. Neither me or Lily knows where it is."
"Better," said Emrett. "But don't think you've escaped any sort of punishment. This session is over and I will return."
Emrett left with Beheeyem and the guard. They locked the door behind them. A minute later a tray of food came through a slit in the bottom of the door. Bread and water, but they were in plenty, and Robert ate.
There came a sudden uprush of grisly details about execution, supplied long since by his studies. But that was a dose too strong for the consciousness to accept. It hovered before his imagination for a fraction of a second, agonizing him to a kind of mental scream, and then sank away in a blur. Mere death returned as the object of attention. What had an afterlife to do with it? Happiness in some other and disembodied world (he never thought of unhappiness) was totally irrelevant to a man who was going to be killed. The killing was the important thing. On any view, this body—this limp, shaking, desperately vivid thing, so intimately his own—was going, sooner or later, to be returned into a dead body. This cared nothing for souls. The choking, smothering sensation gave the body's view of the matter with an intensity that excluded all else.