Chapter 20: A Smaller Cell — The Key of Oslov

Volume 1: A Serviceable Boy

Chapter 20 A Smaller Cell

Chapter Notes

I’m going to double up chapters today to get Gersha and Tilrey back together a bit sooner. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Chapter Notes

I’m going to double up chapters today to get Gersha and Tilrey back together a bit sooner. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Not until dawn did Ranek finally pick up one of Gersha’s calls. “Good morning, Councillor,” he said, sounding so placid and well rested that Gersha wanted to punch the wall of the bed alcove.He was sleeping in Tilrey’s room again—or trying to sleep—because his own room had become so enormous and empty it echoed. Here, at least, he felt hidden like a small creature in a burrow that smelled faintly of the warm body that had been so close to his twenty-four hours ago.“I know you said the less I know, the better.” He forced himself upright, fists clenched and head swimming. “But Ranek, you need, I need—”He’d composed a long speech, full of graceful circumlocutions and protocol-speak, to couch his pressing desire for an update. But it had vanished like the vapor of his breath outdoors. “Tell me how he is,” he demanded.He expected Ranek to stammer and equivocate, perhaps to threaten to revoke his security clearance again. But his friend spoke warmly, without missing a beat: “He’s friendly and cooperative, and in far less mental distress than you are at the moment. Gersha, I beg of you, stop fretting and get some sleep. We’re civilized people here. Your lad will be fine.”*Tilrey woke naked in a box in the dark.When he tried to sit up, he hit his head. When he tried to stretch out his arms, they met walls—walls with a slight rubbery give, but no yield. He could recline full length, and he could (carefully) roll over on his stomach or side, but raise his head five or six inches, and it hit a wall.Panic closed his throat. I can’t move. There’s no air. I can’t breathe.For few instants he flailed, striking out, trying to break the walls of his prison or shove them aside. They did not budge, and when he lay still again, the box seemed smaller than before.Calm. Calm. Very gingerly, he ran his fingertips and toes around the edges of the box, tracing its contours. Several times longer than it was tall or wide, it fit his body almost exactly, like one of those boxes where Harbourers buried their dead.Again he forced himself to relax his throat. I can breathe. I can. He could not turn back-to-front or stand or sit or stretch his arms above his head, but he had no reason to believe the air was running out. A vent or pipe must be feeding the box somewhere. It was only terror that had been suffocating him.He rolled on his back again, crossed his arms on his breast, and replayed the moments just before they’d knocked him out. Egil’s face, complacent. Celinda’s, sullen but not scared. The show’s over.One thing was for sure: he was in the Sector. This was Int/Sec’s kind of tactic; he could almost smell it in the box’s smooth, featureless walls. Probably he’d been there the whole time. The attack on the Dissident cell had been a show acted out by Celinda, the boy, and the soldiers, aided by sound effects, while Egil watched the whole thing remotely.But how? Despite his earlier fears, he didn’t believe Celinda had been working for Int/Sec the whole time; she’d seemed way too earnest. And why put on this elaborate performance for him?Tilrey shoved the questions aside. What mattered was that, if he was in the Sector, and he wasn’t under any grave suspicion, they wouldn’t physically hurt him. Couldn’t. It would be like last time, and he’d survived that.This cell was padded, too. Just a lot smaller.“Look, Fir,” he said aloud to the darkness, “it’s true I talked to Celinda about . . . shirking. Dissidence. In the apartment block, and then in the Library. If you were listening in then, you know I didn’t let her recruit me. I didn’t report her like I should have, either. But . . .”He stopped, partly because he didn’t have a good reason and partly because silence swallowed the words, and talking made him short of breath again.Anyway, he knew now how Egil operated. The man wasn’t going to show up and start grilling him right away, not when he could sit and watch Tilrey react and take notes on his “stamina.” If the business with Celinda had been the first show, this was the second.Only maybe Tilrey wouldn’t provide a show. Maybe he had no interest in satisfying the interrogator’s curiosity about how long he could endure this confinement before he started thrashing and screaming for release.Slowly, to avoid slamming up against the roof, he drew his knees toward his chest and found he could just barely assume a fetal position.Eyes closed. The key was not to panic, not to let more than one wall of the box touch him at any one time. There’s no box. I’m in my bed at home.He imagined the room spreading around him—the same shape as this box, roughly, but bigger. So much bigger. He imagined Gersha resting to his right against the wall of the alcove—not that Gersha had ever been in his bed except the one time after Election Night, but why not? In the single bed, they had to lie very close. Gersha’s warm breath wafted on his cheek; his fingers grazed Tilrey’s hip. Gersha slept beautifully, serenely, and Tilrey should be asleep, too.

I’m comfortable. If I want to move, I can move. It’s the middle of the night, so why would I sit up?

He began counting seconds.*The high-named young Upstart Dissenter, Fredrich Akeina, had been reduced to a sobbing heap of a man. The wall-screen offered a night-vision view of his cell: he crouched in a corner, arms around his knees, answering the interrogator’s questions in a small, broken voice.Gersha took a gulp of strong tea to stabilize his whirling head. He shifted his gaze from the screen to the gleaming marble wall of the committee room, but he couldn’t shut out the frightened Upstart’s confession.Young Akeina swore he didn’t believe in abolishing Levels or Whybergism. He just wanted to make things a bit fairer. No, he hadn’t recruited any Laborers to the cause; they’d recruited him.It was that girl Celinda, his uncle’s piece, who’d done it. His uncle had given Fredrich a night with her, and they’d talked and talked, and her skin was so soft and her hair was so gold, and yes, maybe Fredrich was a bit in love with her; he couldn’t deny that. They continued to meet in secret, and Celinda convinced him Whybergism had been perverted into inherited privilege, and he agreed. He knew better now, though, of course! He’d been foolish. He repented.Councillor Karishkov hit something on his handheld, and the image froze.Gersha hazarded a glance around the room and saw heads shaking, jowls quivering with disgust. No one seemed moved to pity by the young man’s folly.

That could have been me. I could have been him.

“Nicely handled by Interrogator Gersen,” Karishkov told the assembled Int/Sec committee in his crisp, emotionless voice. “Celinda Valde, the kettle girl or whatever you choose to call her, was picked up four days ago. Interrogator Egil’s still working on her, but he thinks there’s a possibility she could lead us to a Laborer cell.”So Ranek had managed to get a decent assignment after all. Where did that leave Tilrey, who was surely a lower priority? Gersha examined the desktop. The last thing he needed was for his colleagues to see how the spectacle of the disgraced, seduced, sobbing Upstart affected him. His head was pounding, his eyelids caked and puffy, his insides threatening to rebel, and all because of a Laborer.Had Fredrich told the truth about being recruited by the girl, or had he hatched the plot himself? It didn’t matter, Gersha decided. Confessing wouldn’t help young Akeina; everyone knew how this went. Once they were done wringing information from him, they would give his family one chance to say goodbye, and then, having issued summary judgment, they would fly him into the Wastes and leave him there to starve or freeze. Strewn across the tundra, his bones would serve as an example for future Upstarts who might be tempted to betray their birthright.Gersha had always known the punishment for treason, but it had never seemed quite so harsh to him before. One more time, he reminded himself of Ranek’s reassurances. Tilrey’s cooperating. They wouldn’t do that to him, anyway. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.“Bullshit,” a nasal voice said.Karishkov turned like a sharp-beaked bird of prey. Though he was about Gersha’s age, he looked and acted considerably older when he was in the Council chamber, as if putting on gravitas. “Excuse me?”“You’re buying this bullshit confession?” Besha asked from where he lounged with his feet on the desk, his chair tipping dangerously. “We’re supposed to believe Akeina never had these ideas till a whore whispered them in his ear? Frankly, I find it hard to believe any Drudge could wield that sort of influence over a Sector admin with a level two security clearance.”“You think Akeina wasn’t recruited, then?” Albertine Linnett asked, turning to scrutinize the younger Councillor.Besha shrugged. “He probably was, but not by a little slut. He got that rhetoric from someone of his own Level or above, which means there are more bad actors we haven’t rooted out. Maybe in the Sector.”“I grant you, Akeina comes off as either lying or incredibly naïve.” There was a weary throb in Linnett’s voice. “But a Laborer cell is consistent with our research. The data show a distinct upswing in organically formed, ideology-driven Laborer-led cells, often originating in the factory cities before spreading to Redda, and—”“Your blasted surveys again?” Karishkov swung his eyes around the room, drawing a wave of dutiful laughter from the committee members. “Clearly, Fir’n Linnett thinks we’re facing an avalanche of resentment from the lower orders.”“Not an avalanche. Not yet. Localized pockets that could spread.”Karishkov ignored her. “And her solution, as always, is to survey the Drudges and see what they want.”More laughter. Linnett’s face had turned to granite.“What does a Drudge actually want?” Karishkov asked, playing to the crowd. “An end to ‘inherited privilege’? No. That’s not a concept Laborers can wrap their heads around. They want to feel happy in their places. They want us to root out the few real shirkers, make an example of them, and give all the other Drudges, the ‘good’ ones, a soft bed and an extra ration of beer twice a ten-day. I ran Int/Sec ops in the factory cities for years; for a while, I even worked undercover, sharing work and meals and beds with them. Believe me, I know. You show me Drudges who call themselves Dissidents, and I’ll show you shirkers and malcontents giving themselves fancy names.”“You haven’t even looked at the data,” Linnett was protesting, but Gersha could no longer pretend to follow the debate.His stomach kept flipping, full of some sickening viscosity. He saw bones scattered across a barren landscape, felt the whistle of arctic wind. He dropped his head on the desk and closed his eyes.*Somewhere close to the two-hour mark, Tilrey must have drifted off. He woke gasping and struggling, his head, hips, and knees already sore from multiple impacts against the walls.No. No. No. Fully awake now, he forced himself to stretch flat, breathe, and stop fighting. To imagine ample space around him. Plenty of air. I’m not choking. I can beat this. I can.But did he want to beat it? The sooner he stopped “holding it together,” the sooner Egil might let him out.He tested the give of the roof with his fingertips, holding the panic down. The surface was just spongy enough to prevent him from doing much damage by bashing his head against it; they’d foreseen that possibility.“Let me out,” he said. And then tried repeating the words, each time a little louder, until he was screaming: “Let me out!”The screams made his ears ring, stole his breath; if he kept this up much longer, the freak-out wouldn’t be feigned. He rolled on his side and lay very still again. “Please, Fir Egil,” he said quietly. “Let’s just get on with this.”No answer.

Not until dawn did Ranek finally pick up one of Gersha’s calls. “Good morning, Councillor,” he said, sounding so placid and well rested that Gersha wanted to punch the wall of the bed alcove.

He was sleeping in Tilrey’s room again—or trying to sleep—because his own room had become so enormous and empty it echoed. Here, at least, he felt hidden like a small creature in a burrow that smelled faintly of the warm body that had been so close to his twenty-four hours ago.

“I know you said the less I know, the better.” He forced himself upright, fists clenched and head swimming. “But Ranek, you need, I need—”

He’d composed a long speech, full of graceful circumlocutions and protocol-speak, to couch his pressing desire for an update. But it had vanished like the vapor of his breath outdoors. “Tell me how he is,” he demanded.

He expected Ranek to stammer and equivocate, perhaps to threaten to revoke his security clearance again. But his friend spoke warmly, without missing a beat: “He’s friendly and cooperative, and in far less mental distress than you are at the moment. Gersha, I beg of you, stop fretting and get some sleep. We’re civilized people here. Your lad will be fine.”

Tilrey woke naked in a box in the dark.

When he tried to sit up, he hit his head. When he tried to stretch out his arms, they met walls—walls with a slight rubbery give, but no yield. He could recline full length, and he could (carefully) roll over on his stomach or side, but raise his head five or six inches, and it hit a wall.

Panic closed his throat. I can’t move. There’s no air. I can’t breathe.

For few instants he flailed, striking out, trying to break the walls of his prison or shove them aside. They did not budge, and when he lay still again, the box seemed smaller than before.

Calm. Calm. Very gingerly, he ran his fingertips and toes around the edges of the box, tracing its contours. Several times longer than it was tall or wide, it fit his body almost exactly, like one of those boxes where Harbourers buried their dead.

Again he forced himself to relax his throat. I can breathe. I can. He could not turn back-to-front or stand or sit or stretch his arms above his head, but he had no reason to believe the air was running out. A vent or pipe must be feeding the box somewhere. It was only terror that had been suffocating him.

He rolled on his back again, crossed his arms on his breast, and replayed the moments just before they’d knocked him out. Egil’s face, complacent. Celinda’s, sullen but not scared. The show’s over.

One thing was for sure: he was in the Sector. This was Int/Sec’s kind of tactic; he could almost smell it in the box’s smooth, featureless walls. Probably he’d been there the whole time. The attack on the Dissident cell had been a show acted out by Celinda, the boy, and the soldiers, aided by sound effects, while Egil watched the whole thing remotely.

But how? Despite his earlier fears, he didn’t believe Celinda had been working for Int/Sec the whole time; she’d seemed way too earnest. And why put on this elaborate performance for him?

Tilrey shoved the questions aside. What mattered was that, if he was in the Sector, and he wasn’t under any grave suspicion, they wouldn’t physically hurt him. Couldn’t. It would be like last time, and he’d survived that.

This cell was padded, too. Just a lot smaller.

“Look, Fir,” he said aloud to the darkness, “it’s true I talked to Celinda about . . . shirking. Dissidence. In the apartment block, and then in the Library. If you were listening in then, you know I didn’t let her recruit me. I didn’t report her like I should have, either. But . . .”

He stopped, partly because he didn’t have a good reason and partly because silence swallowed the words, and talking made him short of breath again.

Anyway, he knew now how Egil operated. The man wasn’t going to show up and start grilling him right away, not when he could sit and watch Tilrey react and take notes on his “stamina.” If the business with Celinda had been the first show, this was the second.

Only maybe Tilrey wouldn’t provide a show. Maybe he had no interest in satisfying the interrogator’s curiosity about how long he could endure this confinement before he started thrashing and screaming for release.

Slowly, to avoid slamming up against the roof, he drew his knees toward his chest and found he could just barely assume a fetal position.

Eyes closed. The key was not to panic, not to let more than one wall of the box touch him at any one time. There’s no box. I’m in my bed at home.

He imagined the room spreading around him—the same shape as this box, roughly, but bigger. So much bigger. He imagined Gersha resting to his right against the wall of the alcove—not that Gersha had ever been in his bed except the one time after Election Night, but why not? In the single bed, they had to lie very close. Gersha’s warm breath wafted on his cheek; his fingers grazed Tilrey’s hip. Gersha slept beautifully, serenely, and Tilrey should be asleep, too.

I’m comfortable. If I want to move, I can move. It’s the middle of the night, so why would I sit up?

He began counting seconds.

The high-named young Upstart Dissenter, Fredrich Akeina, had been reduced to a sobbing heap of a man. The wall-screen offered a night-vision view of his cell: he crouched in a corner, arms around his knees, answering the interrogator’s questions in a small, broken voice.

Gersha took a gulp of strong tea to stabilize his whirling head. He shifted his gaze from the screen to the gleaming marble wall of the committee room, but he couldn’t shut out the frightened Upstart’s confession.

Young Akeina swore he didn’t believe in abolishing Levels or Whybergism. He just wanted to make things a bit fairer. No, he hadn’t recruited any Laborers to the cause; they’d recruited him.

It was that girl Celinda, his uncle’s piece, who’d done it. His uncle had given Fredrich a night with her, and they’d talked and talked, and her skin was so soft and her hair was so gold, and yes, maybe Fredrich was a bit in love with her; he couldn’t deny that. They continued to meet in secret, and Celinda convinced him Whybergism had been perverted into inherited privilege, and he agreed. He knew better now, though, of course! He’d been foolish. He repented.

Councillor Karishkov hit something on his handheld, and the image froze.

Gersha hazarded a glance around the room and saw heads shaking, jowls quivering with disgust. No one seemed moved to pity by the young man’s folly.

That could have been me. I could have been him.

So Ranek had managed to get a decent assignment after all. Where did that leave Tilrey, who was surely a lower priority? Gersha examined the desktop. The last thing he needed was for his colleagues to see how the spectacle of the disgraced, seduced, sobbing Upstart affected him. His head was pounding, his eyelids caked and puffy, his insides threatening to rebel, and all because of a Laborer.

Had Fredrich told the truth about being recruited by the girl, or had he hatched the plot himself? It didn’t matter, Gersha decided. Confessing wouldn’t help young Akeina; everyone knew how this went. Once they were done wringing information from him, they would give his family one chance to say goodbye, and then, having issued summary judgment, they would fly him into the Wastes and leave him there to starve or freeze. Strewn across the tundra, his bones would serve as an example for future Upstarts who might be tempted to betray their birthright.

Gersha had always known the punishment for treason, but it had never seemed quite so harsh to him before. One more time, he reminded himself of Ranek’s reassurances. Tilrey’s cooperating. They wouldn’t do that to him, anyway. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.

“Bullshit,” a nasal voice said.

Karishkov turned like a sharp-beaked bird of prey. Though he was about Gersha’s age, he looked and acted considerably older when he was in the Council chamber, as if putting on gravitas. “Excuse me?”

“You’re buying this bullshit confession?” Besha asked from where he lounged with his feet on the desk, his chair tipping dangerously. “We’re supposed to believe Akeina never had these ideas till a whore whispered them in his ear? Frankly, I find it hard to believe any Drudge could wield that sort of influence over a Sector admin with a level two security clearance.”

“You think Akeina wasn’t recruited, then?” Albertine Linnett asked, turning to scrutinize the younger Councillor.

Besha shrugged. “He probably was, but not by a little slut. He got that rhetoric from someone of his own Level or above, which means there are more bad actors we haven’t rooted out. Maybe in the Sector.”

“I grant you, Akeina comes off as either lying or incredibly naïve.” There was a weary throb in Linnett’s voice. “But a Laborer cell is consistent with our research. The data show a distinct upswing in organically formed, ideology-driven Laborer-led cells, often originating in the factory cities before spreading to Redda, and—”

“Your blasted surveys again?” Karishkov swung his eyes around the room, drawing a wave of dutiful laughter from the committee members. “Clearly, Fir’n Linnett thinks we’re facing an avalanche of resentment from the lower orders.”

“Not an avalanche. Not yet. Localized pockets that could spread.”

Karishkov ignored her. “And her solution, as always, is to survey the Drudges and see what they want.”

More laughter. Linnett’s face had turned to granite.

“What does a Drudge actually want?” Karishkov asked, playing to the crowd. “An end to ‘inherited privilege’? No. That’s not a concept Laborers can wrap their heads around. They want to feel happy in their places. They want us to root out the few real shirkers, make an example of them, and give all the other Drudges, the ‘good’ ones, a soft bed and an extra ration of beer twice a ten-day. I ran Int/Sec ops in the factory cities for years; for a while, I even worked undercover, sharing work and meals and beds with them. Believe me, I know. You show me Drudges who call themselves Dissidents, and I’ll show you shirkers and malcontents giving themselves fancy names.”

“You haven’t even looked at the data,” Linnett was protesting, but Gersha could no longer pretend to follow the debate.

His stomach kept flipping, full of some sickening viscosity. He saw bones scattered across a barren landscape, felt the whistle of arctic wind. He dropped his head on the desk and closed his eyes.

Somewhere close to the two-hour mark, Tilrey must have drifted off. He woke gasping and struggling, his head, hips, and knees already sore from multiple impacts against the walls.

No. No. No. Fully awake now, he forced himself to stretch flat, breathe, and stop fighting. To imagine ample space around him. Plenty of air. I’m not choking. I can beat this. I can.

But did he want to beat it? The sooner he stopped “holding it together,” the sooner Egil might let him out.

He tested the give of the roof with his fingertips, holding the panic down. The surface was just spongy enough to prevent him from doing much damage by bashing his head against it; they’d foreseen that possibility.

“Let me out,” he said. And then tried repeating the words, each time a little louder, until he was screaming: “Let me out!”

The screams made his ears ring, stole his breath; if he kept this up much longer, the freak-out wouldn’t be feigned. He rolled on his side and lay very still again. “Please, Fir Egil,” he said quietly. “Let’s just get on with this.”

No answer.