Chapter I: Front Matter

Rhodes faced the agonies of alien torture
because he knew the secret which held an entire
world in bondage. It was a secret proclaiming--

Forever We Die!

By C. H. Thames

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
August 1956
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The guard spat in Phil Rhodes' food bowl, closed the grate, and trudged away down the stone-walled corridor.

Darkness returned to the narrow, coffin-shaped cell. Rhodes reached for the bowl of gruel. It was tepid, not hot. The cell was very cold. In the square of light admitted briefly when the grate had been opened, Rhodes had seen the big, unkempt guard's breath, a puff of smoke on the cold air. He had also seen the guard hack spittle into the bowl of gruel.

It was no whim on the guard's part. Rhodes grinned wryly, and realized he was doing so, and encouraged his facial muscles in the act. Nothing around here was a whim. Absolutely nothing. It was all part of a plan, and the purpose of the plan was to break Rhodes.

Given: one Earthman.

Problem: to degrade him by subtle psychological torture.

Purpose: a big, fat question mark which, by itself, was almost enough to drive Rhodes crazy.

He ate the gruel. He held his breath and got it down somehow, got it down because he had to.

It had been some time since the last question period, and Rhodes expected to be summoned momentarily. Why me? he thought for the hundredth time. That was part of it, too. Why Rhodes? He was only a student at the Earth University at Deneb III, here on Kedak now--that was Deneb IV--to do field work in extra-terrestrial anthropology. And the Kedaki had come for him one night, how long ago? Rhodes had no idea how long it was, and that was part of the plan too. His sleep was irregular, usually disturbed by one or another of the guards as part of the overall pattern of psychological torture.

Rhodes began to shiver. It was growing suddenly cold. Naturally, that was no accident. The cell was very small and so shaped that Rhodes could neither recline fully nor stand up without jack-knifing his spine. Obviously, he couldn't engage in much physical activity to keep warm. The Kedaki knew this: it was part of the maddening plan.

Rhodes shook with cold, felt the skin of his face going numb, heard his teeth chattering. The abrupt cold now was his entire universe. He made an effort of will--you're warm, he told himself, you're warm. His lips took on that peculiar numb puckering sensation which meant, he knew, that they were blue with cold. He felt a welcome lethargy, then, as if the terrible cold were a bed of repose, the most comfortable, most wonderful bed he'd ever had. He wanted to sink back in it, surrender to it.

If he did, if he surrendered to the blood-freezing cold, he would die.

No, he told himself. That was wrong. They wanted him to think he would die. But it was out of the question. If they'd wanted to kill him, there were easier ways. What they wanted was a state of mind. They wanted terror, a simple animal fear of death.

You're not going to die, Rhodes told himself. They need you--for something. They're very good at making you think so, but you're not going to die.

A sudden blast of hot air belched into the freezing cell.

It was Turkish-bath hot, and it dissipated the cold at once. It was stifling. Rhodes, who was sitting awkwardly because the cell was constructed for minimum comfort, opened his mouth and gulped in the hot, wet air. His lungs needed more oxygen; his head was giddy with the need; his pulses throbbed.

He sank into a troubled sleep, shoulders propped against rough stone. He slept for half an hour while the unseen vents in the cell poured heat on him.

There was a grating sound, and footsteps. Something hard prodded Rhodes' back. He opened his eyes. The heavy boot struck again, thudding against his kidney. He rolled away from it.

"Crawl out of there," the guard said in Kedaki.

Rhodes, who was a student of the Kedaki civilization, understood the language perfectly. But even if he had not, the tone of voice was unmistakable. Rhodes crawled toward the grating on his hands and knees. The roof of the cell was so low, he could barely crawl. It was more a slithering motion. Part of the treatment, Rhodes told himself, able to bear it better because he understood. Part of the process of degradation. Turn a man into an animal, and he'll do whatever you wish.

"More questions?" Rhodes asked in Kedaki when he stood up outside the cell, stretching the cramped muscles of his back, shoulders and legs.

"What do you think?" the guard replied, and prodded him forward down the brightly lit corridor.

* * * * *

The room was very clean. It was spotless, possibly antiseptically clean. That, too, was part of the plan. For Rhodes' cell was filthy. Rhodes' clothing was stiff with his own foul sweat. Rhodes' skin itched with encrusted dirt.

"Sit down," the Kedaki said politely.

Rhodes sighed. This was the polite one. He had two interrogators, one cruel, brutal, harsh, the other as polite and suave as the rustle of silk. To keep Rhodes guessing....

He sat down across a metal desk from the interrogator. The man was, Rhodes judged, in his thirties. He had the faintly purple skin of the Kedaki--not really purple, but as purple as the skin of an American Indian is red. He was slightly built, smooth-skinned, almost beardless. His eyes were very friendly but somehow very deadly.

"You have been here three months," he said conversationally.

"Three months! Yesterday, they told me...."

"Yesterday? Indeed? And how do you know it was yesterday?"

"Well, I thought...."

"You see, you have no way of knowing."

"But three months! You haven't even told me why I'm a prisoner. If I could just make a call," Rhodes said, his voice rising to an almost hysterical whine although he attempted to keep it level. "Just one call to the Earth Consul...."

"Mr. Rhodes," the interrogator said softly. "You are a student, merely a student. I do not say this deprecatingly, but merely to point out that you are not a servant of your government and as such shouldn't undergo torture because you consider it the, ah, patriotic thing to do. How old are you, Rhodes?"

"I'm twenty-one," Rhodes said.

"A very young man, but stubborn."

"Listen!" Rhodes cried, his voice rising out of control again. "I don't even know what you want to know! Every day you change your questions! And every day you change how you react to my answers. I don't know what you want! I think you're crazy, all of you!"

"Do you really think so?"

"No," Rhodes admitted in a subdued voice.

"I will tell you something, Rhodes. We Kedaki are experts at psychological torture. You know that, don't you, as a student of our culture? Yes?--good. Eventually, we get what we want. Since no Kedaki fears death because he knows he will be reincarnated--"

"You _say_."

"No Kedaki doubts this fact. Other creatures are not reincarnated, but the Kedaki are. As a consequence, the Kedaki are fearless. The fear of death does not exist for us and therefore, the fear of pain and violence is also minimized. The Kedaki, as you know, make wonderful soldiers. I tell you all this only to prove that we are the galaxy's most adept practitioners of psychological torture, as a necessity. I tell you all this only to save you further trouble."

"But I still don't know what you want."

"Nor will you, ever. Even when we are finished with you. I'll tell you, Rhodes. We want the answer to one question. We are asking you hundreds. When we break you completely, when you answer every question the way we want it to be answered, you will answer the one important question. Are you ready?"

"No," said Rhodes.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Because I can never tell in advance whether you want the truth or lies. Because either way I give myself a hard time. Look: just ask me the one question. Maybe I won't mind answering it."

"You'll mind. Besides, when we're all finished here, we don't want you to know. What kind of work do you do, Rhodes?"

"You know what kind. I already told you, fifty times."

"What kind of work do you do, Rhodes?"

"I'm a student of extra-terrestrial anthropology at Deneb University, doing field work here on Kedak...."

"Good."

Good, thought Rhodes. They're accepting the truth today, not rejecting it. He settled back in his chair and answered the unimportant initial questions almost automatically. His family back on Earth. Mother, father, younger sister. What he thought of Deneb III and the university there. Why he wanted to be an extra-terrestrial anthropologist. Exactly what kind of field work he was doing on Kedak.

"Reincarnation," Rhodes said. "At least, a planet-wide belief in reincarnation. It's unique in the galaxy, as far as we know, and it sets the pattern for Kedaki civilization."

"You are making a planet-wide study?"

Rhodes shook his head. He'd been asked these questions many times before, but it was the subject he loved and he felt himself warming to it. "Not a planet-wide study," he said. "Just this city. Just Junction City. But if you can learn how a sweeping social institution controls one center of population, then...."

"I'm sure," the interrogator said dryly.

"Besides, there are the ruins outside the city."

"Indeed, there are the ruins."

"Because an anthropologist is interested in the history of his subject as well as its merely ephemeral present. And there are those who believe that the Balata 'kai ruins hold the origin of your belief in metempsychosis...."

"Do you, Rhodes?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"Have you found anything to fortify this belief?"

"I have."

"What have you found?"

"The Balata 'kai _Book of the Dead_. Oh, it isn't a book, really. It's some tablets--five thousand years old."

"You have seen these tablets?"

"Yes," said Rhodes.

"Where?"

"The Temple of the Golden Dome, Balata 'kai."

"They are there now?"

"No," said Rhodes. "I took them."

"You took them where?"

"Well, I hid them."

"Where?"

Rhodes grinned. "I'm not going to answer that," he said. He was thinking. Prolong the interview, Phil old boy. Because it's clean here, and neither too warm nor too cold, and you can sit comfortably or stand if you want to.

"Why aren't you going to answer it?"

Rhodes grinned again. "I realize this isn't very important to you...."

"Everything is important to me while I do my job."

"But it's very important to me, I was going to say. Because _The Book of the Dead_ is an anthropological find, that's why. Because I intend to have an exclusive on it until I've finished my work here."

"What makes you think _The Book of the Dead_ isn't very important to us?"

"Don't tell me," Rhodes said incredulously, "that I'm in jail and being tortured because I won't tell you where I've hid an anthropological curiosity which may not even be genuine!"

"No, I won't tell you. Now, as to the genuineness of _The Book of the Dead_...."

* * * * *

Rhodes felt suddenly sleepy. He'd been awakened to come here. He was always awakened to come here, sometimes after what he thought was a full night's sleep and sometimes after what seemed only a few moments. He listened sleepily as the interrogator went on, surprisingly doing most of the talking. He hardly heard the words, had all he could do to keep his head from slumping down on the desk. It just wasn't very important. It was preliminary to what really mattered, to the questions about Earth history, sociology, engineering, economy, which always followed.

But why me? Rhodes thought. My subject is extra-terrestrial anthropology....

"... therefore, Rhodes," the interrogator was saying, "_The Book of the Dead_ is not only the oldest known written document on Kedak, but also, clearly, genuine. Do you agree?"

Rhodes stood up and paced back and forth. The interrogator permitted this, even encouraged it. There was neither room to stand nor to pace in Rhodes' cell, a fact which made it difficult for Rhodes to do anything but cooperate completely with his interrogator. Well, why shouldn't I cooperate? he thought. If I cooperate, they'll let me out of here. Let me out of here? No, how can they do that? They're holding an extra-Kedakian illegally, and they know it, and I know it, and they know I know it. My God, Rhodes thought suddenly, are they going to kill me when they're finished with me? It seemed the only logical outcome of all this.

"... population growth of the Earth colony on the planet Mars?"

Rhodes supplied the answer, knowing it was one you could find in any textbook on the Martian colony back in the solar system. All this, he thought, for what? Because Kedak is resisting its incorporation into the Galactic League? Because the Kedaki rulers want to be left alone, fearing that their doctrine of reincarnation will be discredited by intercourse with other worlds?

But the one maddening question remained: why Rhodes?

"... titanium deposits on the moons of Jupiter?"

"Sorry," Rhodes said, "I don't know the answer to that one."

At that moment, the room shook.

Trained since his imprisonment to expect the unexpected, Rhodes thought it was part of the treatment. But the interrogator seemed surprised.

There was a deep rumbling which seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the planet. The room shook again. Rhodes felt himself flung violently across it, colliding with the far wall. The interrogator's head slammed against the metal desk, then the interrogator stood up, blood on his face.

"Guard!" he cried. "Take this man back to his cell at once!"

The room shook a third time, plaster sifted down from the ceiling, and a big crack appeared over Rhodes' head. Through it he saw daylight--the first daylight he'd seen in three months, if he could believe the interrogator.

"Guard!" screamed the interrogator, his composure gone.

Kedak was, Rhodes knew, an earthquake-prone planet. All young worlds were, and Kedak was a young world. Was this, then, an earthquake?

The room swayed, tilted. Rhodes staggered uphill back to the desk, clutching its edge for support. Underfoot, there was a rolling, booming sound. You could not merely hear it, you could feel it. It rolled on from a long way off, coming closer every second, like the distant boom of a thousand cannon fired at split-second intervals.

The door opened, and the guard stood there. The interrogator pointed at Rhodes, shouting something which was swallowed completely by the rolling, booming sound. The guard shouted something back, unheard in the noise, then walked toward Rhodes.

He never reached the Earthman.

The room rocked. The floor came up suddenly, jarringly, and the ceiling came down.

The guard stood there, a look of horror on his face. Not fear of death, Rhodes found himself thinking in the final few seconds. The Kedaki, believing in metempsychosis, did not fear death. But the choking, blinding fear of any man a split-second before personal catastrophe.

Then, literally, the ceiling fell.

The guard pivoted slowly, as if he had all the time in the world to return to the door. He took one small step and the ceiling hit him. It came down not in one sheet but sectionally, Rhodes found himself thinking with amazing objectivity, because--see?--the guard is being struck now, but I haven't been touched....

The guard fell, and the ceiling crumpled on top of him. Rhodes saw the guard's head, very close to the floor, bent at right angles to his body, which was stretched out and hidden by the shards of plaster and stone. There was a worm of blood trickling from the guard's nose. His eyes were opened wide, but the eyeballs had rolled up in the sockets.

The interrogator screamed, and Rhodes heard the sound faintly above the thunderous booming before the tons of plaster and stone came down on both of them.