Transition. Part 12

I think that he suffocated because I tied the bin bag too tight.

I hadn't really intended to kill him, not at the start, not until I really got into it, I think, but as I worked on him I think he somehow became less human to me, more just this thing that reacted in a certain way to a certain stimulus, a set of workings that produced a set of noises and a set of muscular contractions and a set of blisterings and discolorations on the skin, according to what I subjected him to. I think also that I started to feel I had done so much damage to him that it would somehow be tidier to kill him off. I don't mean that I wanted to be merciful, to put him out of his misery his misery was what was interesting to me but that he was so badly compromised as a human specimen he had stopped being entirely human. I'm not putting this very well. He was all too clearly human, but he was, he had become, less than human. I would even resist the obvious conclusion that it was I who had done this to him. I had the nagging, perhaps illogical, but quite inescapable feeling that he was doing this to himself, that, despite my total and absolute control over him, he was still somehow responsible for his own torment. I'm still not entirely sure why I felt this, but I definitely did. I think that I developed a sort of contempt for him, despite the fact that I knew I had surprised him and left him with no chance of escaping or resisting me. I'd clubbed him while he was asleep (drunkenly asleep, but still). What chance had he had? None. But that's just the way things are sometimes.

In any event, I did kill him, obviously. Partly it was because I got distracted when I found an old car battery at the back of the cellar when I was looking for new things to use on him and I believe he expired from lack of oxygen while I was still trying to get the acid out of it. I thought he might be pretending at first. He was completely limp, and there was no pulse in either wrist or under his jaw, but you could never be sure. I used pliers on his fingernails the fingers were all loose and granular-feeling because I'd already smashed them with the hammer but he did not react so I concluded he really was dead. I tied the bin bag back round his head tied tightly, reckoning that if he was dead I ought to be sure of it.

The thing is, I had thought my heart could not have beaten harder and faster than when I'd been breaking into the house in the first place but I'd been wrong. It thrashed in my chest like something wild as I tortured Mr F and although I won't pretend that I was in any way professional, I felt powerful and in charge and as though I had finally found something that I just naturally knew how to do.

What I had not done, of course, was actually put any questions to him. I hadn't asked him whether he'd raped his daughter, or what he might have done with his wife. I'd thought of it, but in the end I was too frightened that my voice would betray my nervousness, or he'd scream loud enough to attract a neighbour. I suppose I could have got him to respond to questions through simply nodding or shaking his head but that didn't really occur to me. I just wanted to inflict a lot of pain on him for what he had done to GF and, as the night went on, I suppose, yes, I thought I might as well kill him, even though he hadn't seen my face, I hadn't spoken to him and I was fairly sure he'd never be able to identify me. It just seemed like the right thing to do. The tidiest.

I unlocked the front door and put the key back under the flowerpot where I had found it. The last thing I did was break the window in the spare room from the outside to make it look like I'd come in that way. I'd left enough of a clear area on the carpet beneath the window for it not to be obvious this had happened after the ransacking. I got home and back into bed, unseen. I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

The next day I went for a walk in the woods. I took the rucksack with all the clothes I'd worn that night, far into a dense plantation, and burned it. Then I dug a hole nearly a metre deep and buried the ashes.

A business colleague of Mr F found him two days later, the day before GF was due back from the camp. Relatives came to look after her and took her away for nearly a month. The police said they were looking for one or two burglars and announced that it was probably a robbery gone wrong. Everybody in town apart from myself slept very badly for the next few weeks. I slept like a baby. All I had to do to cover my tracks was keep the swagger out of my walk and the sneer from my lips. I knew what I had done, and felt proud and manly and in control. I was even more proud that I had been able to see through to the end what I had done to Mr F than I was of getting away with murder.

When I heard they were fingerprinting all the men in the town I went along to the police station without grumbling; not one of the first to go, but not reluctantly either. I was never even questioned. The police concluded the ghastly crime had been committed by an unknown person or unknown persons from out of town and gradually life returned to normal.

Nevertheless, what I had done had been amateurish and out of control and I had acted like policeman, jailer, judge, jury and executioner. I admit that this did seem wrong to me. I had discovered something that I was good at and even in a sort of righteous but I hope not perverse way had enjoyed, but this was not altogether right. There have to be limits, there has to be some sort of apparatus of judgement and rightful jurisdiction, an oversight, if you will, that gives the torturer proper authority.

I had got away with what I had done but if I hoped to do anything like it again then I felt I could not repeat my actions. I certainly was not about to start murdering people in their cellars like some seedy serial killer. Mr F had deserved what had happened to him and I had been the means of delivering justice to him, but that was that. I had to accept that through sound preparation, good judgement and good luck I had succeeded in my mission and been able to walk away.

GF came back and stayed with one of her aunts in a town-centre hotel until the funeral. I left a message and we met in our usual cafe. She seemed distant and yet relaxed and I realised she was probably on some sort of medication. She no longer wore the braces on her teeth and said that she had missed me and had stopped cutting herself, for now at least.

I didn't go to the funeral; she didn't ask me to.

She started at the same college I attended and got a flat with another girl. I moved into a place nearby with a couple of guys. GF and I started going out again and soon became intimate once more, though neither of us ever again suggested any bondage games.

She never talked about her father, but then she rarely had.

One day we both had time off and had gone to bed in my flat.

"Remember these?" she asked, producing a packet of Sugar Cherries from her bag. "Confiscated them from a Junior Forester." She popped one into my mouth and another into her own. We chewed on them noisily for a while. I tried to remember the last time I had eaten one. "I used to love these," I said.

Then she sat upright in the bed and stopped chewing and looked down at me, her face looking drained. One of her hands stroked her other wrist and forearm, where the old marks were. She got out of the bed and took the sticky mess that was all that was left of the Sugar Cherry out of her mouth and threw it into the waste bin. She started to dress.

I asked her what was wrong.

She didn't answer. She just shook her head. I could tell that she was crying. I kept on asking her what was wrong but she would not reply and left soon afterwards.

We were never intimate again and she refused to engage in any proper conversation thereafter, not quite ignoring me but treating me very coldly.

Had I written this two or three years ago I would have concluded by admitting, genuinely mystified, that I never understood why this happened, why she suddenly left me. However, now I think that I do know why: I was betrayed by a remembered taste. (No, I must be honest; my betrayal was revealed by a remembered taste.) Considering all that I have seen and done, it is remarkable that it is this such a tiny, trivial thing, so many years ago, before our relations.h.i.+p had even properly begun that brings a blush of blood to my face when I think about it and makes me feel ashamed. I have done things most people would be ashamed of and watched things done I would be ashamed of, yet it was for the taking of one sweet not even that, perhaps; for not owning up to that petty theft, and the implication that it had been me who had stolen her pencil-sharpener blade as well that I was condemned then and still feel soiled now.

I joined the army later that year and was posted abroad, becoming a military policeman after much study. The hardest bit was pa.s.sing the psychological test. They didn't really want people who had done what I had done to another human being in the force, at least not then, anyway, but I was smart enough to know what they wanted to be told, and told them what they wanted to hear. Knowing how that process works, from the inside as it were, is in itself an important part of my line of work, so even then I was learning, and adding to my skill set.

8

Patient 8262

Most worlds are Closed, a few are Open. Most people are not Aware, a few are Aware. An Open world is one in which most people are Aware and there is no need to dissemble regarding the business of flitting or transitioning between worlds. Where I am now, lying in this bed in this clinic, is a Closed world, a reality where possibly n.o.body except myself knows that the many worlds exist, let alone that they are connected and that travel between them is possible. This is as it should be, for my purposes. This is what I wanted when I came here. This is my protection.

I opened my eyes to find the fat bald man sitting staring at me; the same man with the bad skin who makes a habit of sitting beside me in the television room during my rare visits there and talking continually in his incomprehensible dialect or accent.

There is mist outside and the weather feels cold for the first time this year, though I am still warm inside my hospital bed. The fat man wears the same white and pale blue pyjamas that we all wear, and a faded blue dressing gown that has seen better days. He is talking to me. It is mid-morning and the usual mid-morning cup of fruit juice is sitting on my bedside cabinet. I was not aware of the orderly leaving it.

The fat man is talking quite animatedly to me, as though he expects me to understand what he's saying. Actually he may be making an effort for me; I get the impression he is trying to talk more slowly, at least initially. Also, his skin condition appears to have improved recently too. He may be talking more slowly than usual, but he seems to be compensating by talking more loudly and with greater emphasis. He gestures quite a lot, too, and his upper body moves as he does so and I can see tiny specks of spittle arcing from his mouth to fall on the bedclothes between us. I am a little worried that some of his spittle might land on my face, even on my lips. I might catch something.

I frown, sit up in bed and cross my arms, enabling me to put one hand up to my mouth so that it looks like I am listening, or at least trying to listen, to what he's saying, but really I'm just s.h.i.+elding my mouth from any errant spit. I frown some more as he jabbers on, I put a pained expression on my face and sigh deeply, generally trying to give the impression of wanting to understand what he is saying, but failing. He doesn't appear to be paying much attention anyway, frankly, just talking away in a machine-gun flurry of sound within which I can barely make out one word in twenty.

I suppose if I concentrated I might understand more, but from the little I can make out he's complaining about another patient stealing something from him, or insulting him, or taking his place in some queue, or all three, and the medical staff either being responsible in the first place or being complicit or guilty of not listening or all three and to be perfectly honest I don't care. He just needs to talk to somebody, preferably somebody who might be neutral regarding whatever petty nonsense this is all about, and preferably, I suspect, somebody who is not likely to answer back or ask any pertinent questions or actually engage with him and his concerns at all. He's just offloading. Depressingly, I am the perfect choice.

It's strange, this need to talk, to express ourselves even when we know or strongly suspect that the person seemingly listening isn't really, or can't understand, or doesn't care, or couldn't do anything anyway even if all the above did not apply. Some of us just like the sound of our own voice and most of us need to vent sometimes, to get things out, to release pressure. Occasionally, too, we need to articulate vague but powerful feelings and so make them less frustratingly vague, the act of expressing them itself helping to define what it is we feel in the first place. I suspect the fat man, just now, hovers between the love-of-own-voice and letting-off-steam explanations.

He nods emphatically, falls briefly silent and sits back, hands on knees, having apparently just come to some conclusive break in his oration. He looks expectantly at me, as though I'm supposed to respond. I move my head in a sort of circular motion, something between a nod and a shake, and spread my hands. He looks annoyed at this and I feel I need to say something, but I don't want to attempt anything in his own language as this will just encourage him. I can't let slip that I can speak languages which are quite simply not of this world vanis.h.i.+ngly small though the chance may be that this could materially affect my security or threaten my anonymity so I decide to make up some gibberish.

I say something like, "Bre trel gesem patra noch, cho lisk esheldevone," and nod, as though for emphasis.

The fat man rocks back, eyes wide. He nods too, enthusiastically, and comes out with a barrage of quick-fire sounds not one of which I comprehend. He looks like he actually understood what I said. But that's not possible.

"Bloshven braggle sna korb leysin tre epeldevein ashk," I tell him when he stops to draw breath. "Kivould padal krey tre napastravodile eshestre chroom." I shrug. "Krivin," I add, with a nod for emphasis, for good measure.

He nods so hard that I expect to hear his teeth rattle. He slaps his knees. "Blah blah blah blah blah!" he replies. Not actually that one repeated nonsense filler word, obviously, but a stream of noise.

It is almost as though he does understand me. This is becoming alarming. I can feel myself getting rather hot. I determine to say no more, but he lets loose such a tirade of sound, complete with wild gestures and more spitting, that I feel it is impossible not to respond. If nothing else, at least when I am speaking he is not and so I am in no danger of being splashed with flecks of saliva.

"Lethrep stimpit kra zho ementeusis fla jun pesertefal, krin tre halulavala!" I respond. He nods again, talks quickly and incomprehensibly, then holds up one hand and gets up, grunting, disappearing into the corridor. I would like to think he has gone for the day. Or for good, but something about his last gesture, holding his hand up like that, leads me to believe he is going to reappear all too soon. While he is away I fan my face and flap the bedclothes to cool myself down.

He comes back a couple of minutes later, shepherding into my room another patient, a skinny, slack-jawed fellow I recognise but have never talked to. In fact he's one of those I thought didn't talk to anybody. His thin, worn face looks too old for his body. He has lank black hair, an expression of no expression and a straggly beard that never seems to grow. He shows no sign of acknowledging me. The fat man plonks him down in the seat he has just vacated and gibbers a stream of language at him. I think I catch a word or two about listening and talking, but he is talking too fast for me to be sure. The younger man looks at me and in a low voice says something I do not catch. The fat man, standing behind him, gestures expectantly at me. I signal back, a two-handed What? What? motion. The fat man rolls his eyes and makes a sort of circular hurrying signal with one of his hands while the other taps the younger man on the shoulder and then points at me. motion. The fat man rolls his eyes and makes a sort of circular hurrying signal with one of his hands while the other taps the younger man on the shoulder and then points at me.

"Skib ertelis byan grem shetlintibub," I say to the younger man. "Bolzaten glilt ak etherurta fisriline hulp." I feel my face grow hotter still and fear that I am blus.h.i.+ng. Sweat is gathering on my brow. This is perfectly absurd, but both men now seem rapt, and I feel it is easier to go on talking, even if it is utter gibberish, than it is to fall silent and wait for them to reply, or just burst out laughing. "Danatre skeh.e.l.lis, ro vleh gra'ampt na zhire; sko tre genebellis ro binits.h.i.+re, na'sko voross amptfenir-an har." Finally I can go on no longer, and as my throat dries up I simply run out of nonsense to speak.

The younger man narrows his eyes and nods slowly, again as though he understands this absolute rubbish. He looks slowly away from me to the fat man and says something. The fat man nods and makes a hand gesture that might mean I told you so I told you so. The young man leans forward and says, quite slowly, "Poldi poldipol, pol pol poldipolpol poldi poldi." He sits back, smirking.

Well, of course, they are simply making fun of me. I smile thinly, look him in the eyes and say, "Poldi poldi polodi plopolpopolpopilploop."

I expect him to smirk again, or laugh, but he doesn't. Instead he sits back as though struck, his expression changes to that of somebody who has just been profoundly insulted, he looks me up and down and then rises smartly to his feet, angrily shrugging off the hand of the fat man who appears to be trying to placate him. The fat man starts to say something, sounding soothing, but the young man interrupts him, shouting him down in what sounds like a stream of invective. The only word I can make out is the nonsense one "Poldi." He turns imperiously, spits at the floor under my bed and storms out, head held high.

The fat man says something plaintive to him, goes to the door and says something after him, then gives a deep sigh, shakes his head and looks in at me, his expression regretful, hurt and disappointed. He scratches the back of his head with one chubby hand and expels another resigned sigh. He says something inflected to be a question, I think. I am definitely not saying anything else from this point on, and I just sit there glaring at him.

He shakes his head once more, asks another, similar-sounding question, then when I still do not reply, but glare even more pointedly at him he rubs one thick-fingered hand over his bald pate and stares down at the floor, possibly at where the younger patient spat. I doubt he will have the manners to do anything about that particular outrage. I bet I shall have to wait for an orderly or the cleaners to clean it up. I suppose I could do it myself, but I feel the gesture was both rude and uncalled-for and I don't see why I should.

He mutters, staring away, as though talking to himself, and rubs his hands together, looking and sounding worried. He sighs theatrically, shakes his head one more time, and leaves, shoulders drooped, still muttering.

He stays away this time. Filled with relief, I reach for my thin plastic cup and the watery fruit juice. As I drink it, I notice that my hands are shaking.

The Transitionary.

"Did you kill Lord Harmyle?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was ordered to."

"By whom?"

"Madame d'Ortolan."

"I know that not to be true. Lord Harmyle was not on your list."

"Really? Must have misread it."

"Please don't affect flippancy."

"No? Okay."

"Now, did you-"

"Have you seen the list?"

"What?"

"Have you seen the list?"

"Not relevant. Did you have orders to kill anybody else?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Dr Seolas Plyte, Ms Pum Jesusdottir, Mr Brashley Krijk, der Graf Heurtzloft-Beiderkern, Commandante Odil Obliq and Mrs Mulverhill the younger."

A pause. I got the impression this was being written down as well as recorded. The circle of lights surrounded me. My questioner was still behind me, unseen. "My information indicates that you were asked merely to forcibly transition the people you mention, with the exception of Lord Harmyle, who, as already indicated, we know was not on your list."

"I was given verbal orders from Madame d'Ortolan that all those on the list were to be killed, not transitioned. Quickly as possible."

"Verbal instructions?" instructions?"

"Yes."

"In a matter of such importance?"

"Yes."

"To be confirmed in writing subsequently?"

"No. I asked specifically. Definitely not to be confirmed in writing subsequently."

"That would be unprecedented, I take it?"

"Yes."

"I see."

"I would like to ask a question."

Another pause. "Go ahead."

"Who are you?" We were speaking a version of English which had separate "yous" for singular and plural; I had used the plural version.

"We are officers of the Concern," the calm male voice said. "What did you think?"

"Who do you answer to?"

No pause. "Were your orders delivered to you in the usual fas.h.i.+on?"

"Yes. A one-time mechanical micro-reader."

"Did you question your orders?"

"Yes. As I've said."

"But you still accepted them, including the unprecedented alleged instruction to kill individuals who, according to your written orders, were only to be forcibly transitioned for their own safety."

"Yes."

"Had you received orders to kill so many people before?"

"No."

"Were you aware that they were unusual orders in requiring such a... such a glut of killing?"

"Yes."

"And yet you did not think to question them."

"I did question them. And in the end I did not obey them."