“I know that you keep to yourself,” he says after a subsequent pause during which I realize that I have intimidated him—I have intimidated the seventeenth man in the old hierarchy, “and in the usual circumstances we would simply not come to you. But I am afraid that this matter is now extreme. Extreme, and we have no time to waste.” He helps himself to one of the destructive cigarettes which we have learned to enjoy and sits uncomfortably on a hassock. “You see, I must talk to you now. We need your help; your gifts are irreplaceable at this time. Remember how it was in the shiptime. Did I not always find a place for you; a good rôle? You were never made sacrificial during the ceremonies. You must listen to me now, Quir. Our time is short. Things do not slacken but become taut as apocalypse approaches.” I decide that he is insane.
Plotar then explains, somewhat disjointedly, that a careful plot has been constructed in the enclosure. The plot is to take it over by subduing institutional personnel and then make an effective mass escape. The plot has been worked out by a group whose number Plotar will not divulge. Despite the constant surveillance of the enclosure and the equally constant attention of the therapists, the existence of the plan has somehow been concealed from the aliens . . . and now the time for enactment is here. Selected individuals whose specialties are vital are being sought for enlistment and instruction; the remainder of my shipmates will merely be the beneficiaries of the escape, without prior knowledge. This maldistribution is necessary since the more who know of the plot, the greater the risk of revelation by someone untrustworthy. “Some of us must take risks so that all may be free,” Plotar says sadly, gesturing with the cigarette, bumping it against one of the walls. “Still, nothing is really fair.”
He points out that I am needed and am now being approached because of my speciality. My geological sophistry will enable me to detect key points of weakness in the construction of the enclosure through which planned incendiary devices may be thrust and exploded with a good chance of success. The subsequent fires will be terrifying but will succumb to extinguishers which are already being constructed. The plot has progressed quickly in these final stages and actions are scheduled to begin only two days hence. Plotar states that all I will have to do on the following evening is take a casual walk with him through selected portions of the enclosure, pointing out what I take to be places of particular susceptibility to the explosives.
“There’s no risk to that,” he explains. “Just taking a walk and selecting sites for the explosives. I wouldn’t think of asking you if there were any risk. They’re so pitifully sure of themselves at this time that they now let us socialize freely. I doubt if we’re even observed anymore as we were in the beginning. Who could object in any event to the two of us taking a brief, bracing walk through the enclosure, talking together about the ship time, remembering ceremonies? And then, when we have taken the enclosure, it will be a simple thing to arrange transportation to the ship and our freedom.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, giving his remarks the aspect of discussion although this is not what he has in mind. “It is not that simple.”
“Certainly it is! The enclosure is important to them; all of the records and data are here. They could hardly risk our threat to destroy it. There will be an honored place on the voyage home for you, a very honored place, and an immortal rôle for you in the lexicon of our heroism when we return. I ask of you only this one small service, Quir, for we cannot continue this way indefinitely. I have it on the best authority that they plan to kill us when they have extracted the last shreds of vital information, and that point is not far distant. We have told them everything. Quir, we must act quickly.”
Plotar finishes off the cigarette in a spasm of choking and extinguishes it on the floor of my cubicle; looks at the dead end with disgust and then puts it carefully into sole of one of my shoes. The master of ritual was always permitted to take such liberties with the personal property of others and I do not resent this although I regard it with sadness. “We have been totally corrupted, you see,” he says. “These cigarettes are the proof. We are no longer what we were; we have become only an aspect of them, an extension, a series of retrieval devices. They will seize everything from us now if we do not act quickly. Action, Quir! Think of our obligations!”
I point out to Plotar, as gently as possible, that I find his plan unworkable and insane. That it does not seem to have any connection with the reality of the enclosure. I add that under no circumstances will I grant him any cooperation at all and that the hierarchical system is well behind us now. “I won’t be intimidated,” I say with only the slightest lilt to my voice. “That’s all behind us now and I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”
“You are not being intimidated. I am asking for your cooperation; I am really working for you, you understand. Think of this as another ritual if you will, the most elaborate and systematized of them all; we will reconstruct our freedom and give it to ourselves whole and subsequently—”
“You don’t understand the enclosure. It makes no impression upon you. But in my speciality I do, and I have had ample time to think about this and many other things. This enclosure is impenetrable. It is a total barrier not only without but within. There is no way that we can break free, for what you do not understand is that it is not only a condition but a state of mind. I have worked over all of this for a long time and I have thought much of the enclosure. It is a trap. It cannot be broken. I will have nothing whatsoever, nothing at all, to do with your foolish plan. And now I want you to leave my room.”
Shudders of rage assault me; they intersect with that larger sense of revulsion I feel toward Plotar. I remember him as master of the rituals, and I cannot stand him. I do not like any of my shipmates anymore, not one of them. They are all as despicable as me for their imprisonment, but with him the dislike has become personal. I cannot bear him. I see no reason to bear him. The rituals, even the slaughters, are far behind us.
“If you don’t leave,” I say, “I’ll tell my therapist, then. I’ll tell him everything that has gone on here and warn him about your insane plan. That will finish you. And I will come more to their favor; when we are released I will be the first through the walkways.”
“I pity you,” Plotar says. He rises. “They have completely possessed you. You are their property. I did not think that this had happened to you. I had a certain respect; you always participated skillfully in the rituals. And one hundred and ten of us were lower than you.”
“If you feel that way you have spent twenty-nine months here for nothing. You understand not at all what has happened to us, what they want.”
“They want to destroy us,” Plotar says, “and you have become their slave. You will help them destroy us. These simple barbarians have broken you and converted you into their property. I should have judged this and known.”
“Make no judgments, ritual-master.”
“There are others who have not reached your condition. They will not crumple so easily. I have found them. You are not needed, you are completely optional. It was my idea to approach you and give you a chance to participate for your sake. I do not need your participation.”
“You understand nothing,” I say again. “Your experience here has accomplished little. The enclosure is final, it is total. It is miles in circumference, hundreds of yards in height. We will get out of here due to their mercy or we will not get away at all. This cannot be broken. How else could they have kept us here for twenty-nine months?”
“I understand now why you were ranked so,” Plotar says. In the old hierarchy, this is the most damaging statement possible: one cannot make comments upon the inferior worth of those holding lower status without risking exclusion from all rankings and banishment. One cannot even be patronizing. It is some indication of the state Plotar has reached that he would resort, master of the rituals, to such a comment at this time. “The mistake is that you were not at the bottom.” His old face trembles, he rubs his hands together, seems on the verge of saying something else, something final and freeing which will vault me past this simple confrontation and into utter complexity, a knowledge so deep that, Plotarlike, I would be able to organize my thoughts like dancers at a rite; but then it switches off, all of it switches off, and he leaves the room quickly, muttering what I cannot hear. “Bastard,” I think I hear him whisper, but from this aspect it is a caress. “Bastard,” Plotar says in their old rhetoric, and then he is gone.
I return to contemplation. There is nothing else to do.
Thinking, I realize that life in the enclosure, then, has driven all of us toward our separate aspects of desire; we have become the essence of what we wanted to be. It has taught me resignation, it has taught the females accessibility. Some of the others have become obsessive. Plotar is insane. It all depends, then, upon the individual: the perverse and basic identity will always come through . . . and then I put the issue out of my mind, exerting my usual discipline and mental control.
I spend the next hour not thinking but reading instead selected materials given to me for the week by my therapist. I readTheBobbseyTwinsVisittheCity by Laura Lee Hope. I skim a paper calledProscrusteanIgneousFormation presented to the Society of the Resigned by J. L. Envers, M.A. I spend some time with the March 29 issue ofTheMorningTelegraph , the Opening Day issue; a publication which my therapist gives me only rarely as a special favor but which I believe that I am finally beginning to understand. My calculations about the outcome of the races always seem correct but since I am never given consecutive issues I am unable to verify them.
I find that I am no longer interested in reading. Enough. I leave my room in search of a female. I meet a familiar one in the hall and I seize.