This, thought Vanessa, was the Napoleon Syndrome writ large. Gomm was indisputably insane: but what an heroic insanity! And it was essentially harmless. Why did they have to lock him up? He surely wasn't capable of doing damage.
"It seems unfair," she said, “that you're locked away in here -”
"Well that's for our own security, of course," Gomm replied. "Imagine the chaos if some anarchist group found out where we operated from, and did away with us. We run the world. It wasn't meant to be that way, but as I said, systems decay. As time went by the potentates – knowing they had us to make critical decisions for them – concerned themselves more and more with the pleasures of high office and less and less with thinking. Within five years we were no longer advisers, but surrogate overlords, juggling nations."
"What fun," Vanessa said.
"For a while, perhaps," Gomm replied. "But the glamour faded very quickly. And after a decade or so, the pressure began to tell. Half of the committee are already dead. Golovatenko threw himself out of a window. Buchanan – the New Zealander – had syphilis and didn't know it. Old age caught up with dear Yoniyoko, and Bernheimer and Sour butts. It'll catch up with all of us sooner or later, and Klein keeps promising to provide people to take over when we've gone, but they don't care. They don't give a damn! We're functionaries, that's all." He was getting quite agitated. "As long as we provide them with judgements, they're happy. Well…" his voice dropped to a whisper, “we're giving it up."
Was this a moment of self-realization?, Vanessa wondered. Was the sane man in Gomm's head attempting to throw off the fiction of world domination? If so, perhaps she could aid the process.
"You want to get away?" she said.
Gomm nodded. "I'd like to see my home once more before I die. I've given up so much, Vanessa, for the committee, and it almost drove me mad -” Ah, she thought, he knows. "Does it sound selfish if I say that my life seems too great a sacrifice to make for global peace?" She smiled at his pretensions to power, but said nothing. "If it does, it does! I'm unrepentant. I want out! I want -”
"Keep your voice down," she advised.
Gomm remembered himself, and nodded.
"I want a little freedom before I die. We all do. And we thought you could help us, you see." He looked at her. "What's wrong?" he said.
"Wrong?"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You're not well, Harvey. I don't think you're dangerous, but -”
"Wait a minute," Gomm said. "What do you think I've been telling you? I go to all this trouble…" "Harvey. It's a fine story…"
"Story? What do you mean, story?" he said, petulantly. "Oh… I see. "You don't believe me, do you? That's it! I just told you the greatest secret in the world, and you don't believe me!"
"I'm not saying you're lying -”
"Is that it?" You think I'm a lunatic!" Gomm exploded. His voice echoed around the rectangular world. Almost immediately there were voices from several of the buildings, and fast upon those the thunder of feet. "Now look what you've done," Gomm said.
"I've done?"
"We're in trouble."
"Look, H.G., this doesn't mean -”
Too late for retractions. You stay where you are – I'm going to make a run for it. Distract them." He was about to depart when he turned back to her, caught hold of her hand, and put it to his lips. "If I'm mad," he said, “you made me that way."
Then he was off, his short legs carrying him at a fair speed across the yard. He did not even reach the laurel-trees however, before the guards arrived. They shouted for him to stop. When he failed to do so one of the men fired. Bullets ploughed the ocean around Gomm's feet.
"All right," he yelled, coming to halt and putting his hands in the air. "Mea culpa!"
The firing stopped. The guards parted as their commander stepped through.
"Oh, it's you, Sidney," H. G. said to the Captain. The man visibly flinched to be so addressed in front of inferior ranks.
"What are you doing out at this time of night?" Sidney demanded.
"Star-gazing," Gomm replied.
"You weren't alone," the Captain said. Vanessa's heart sank. There was no route back to her room without crossing the open courtyard; and even now, with the alarm raised, Guillemot would probably be checking on her. That's true," said Gomm. "I wasn't alone." Had she offended the old man so much he was now going to betray her? "I saw the woman you brought in -”
"Where?"
"Climbing over the wall," he said.
"Jesus wept!" the Captain said, and swung around to order his men in pursuit.
"I said to her," Gomm was prattling. "I said, you'll break your neck climbing over the wall. You'd be better waiting until they open the gate -”
Open the gate. He wasn't such a lunatic, after all. Phillipenko -” the Captain said," – escort Harvey back to his dormitory -”
Gomm protested. "I don't need a bed-time story, thank you."
"Go with him."
The guard crossed to H. G. and escorted him away. The Captain lingered long enough to murmur, "Who's a clever boy, Sidney?" under his breath, then followed. The courtyard was empty again, but for the moonlight, and the map of the world.
Vanessa waited until every last sound had died, and then slipped out of hiding, taking the route the dispatched guards had followed. It led her, eventually, into an area she vaguely recognized from her walk with Guillemot. Encouraged, she hurried on along a passageway which let out into the yard with Our Lady of the Electric Eyes. She crept along the wall, and ducked beneath the statue's gaze and out, finally, to meet the gates. They were indeed open. As the old man had protested when they'd first met, security was woefully inadequate, and she thanked God for it. As she ran towards the gates she heard the sound of boots on the gravel, and glanced over her shoulder to see the Captain, rifle in hand, stepping from behind the tree.
"Some chocolate, Mrs. Jape?" said Mr. Klein.
This is a lunatic asylum," she told him when they had escorted her back to the interrogation room. "Nothing more nor less. You've no right to hold me here." He ignored her complaints.
"You spoke to Gomm," he said, “and he to you."
"What if he did?"
"What did he tell you?"
"I said: what if he did?"
"And I said: what did he tell you? Klein roared. She would not have guessed him capable of such apoplexy. "I want to know, Mrs. Jape."
Much against her will she found herself shaking at his outburst.
"He told me nonsense," she replied. "He's insane. I think you're all insane."
"What nonsense did he tell you?"
"It was rubbish."
"I'd like to know, Mrs. Jape," Klein said, his fury abating. "Humour me."
"He said there was some kind of committee at work here, that made decisions about world politics, and that he was one of them. That was it, for what it's worth."
"And?"
"And I gently told him he was out of his mind."
Mr. Klein forged a smile. "Of course, this is a complete fiction," he said.
"Of course," said Vanessa. "Jesus Christ, don't treat me like an imbecile, Mr. Klein. I'm a grown woman -” "Mr. Gomm -”
"He said he was a professor."
"Another delusion. Mr. Gomm is a paranoid schizophrenic. He can be extremely dangerous, given half a chance. You were pretty lucky."
"And the others?"
"Others?"
"He's not alone. I've heard them. Are they all schizophrenics?"
Klein sighed. "They're all deranged, though their conditions vary. And in their time, unlikely as it may seem, they've all been killers." He paused to allow this information to sink in. "Some of them multiple killers. That's why they have this place to themselves, hidden away. That's why the officers are armed -”
Vanessa opened her mouth to ask why they were required to masquerade as nuns, but Klein was not about to give her an opportunity.
"Believe me, it's as inconvenient for me as
it is irritating for you to be here," he said.
"Then let me go."
"When my investigations are complete," he said. "In the meanwhile your cooperation would be appreciated. If Mr. Gomm or any of the other patients tries to co-opt you into some plan or other, please report them to me immediately. Will you do that?"
"I suppose -”
"And please refrain from any further escape attempts. The next one could prove fatal."
"I wanted to ask -”
"Tomorrow, maybe," Mr. Klein said, glancing at his watch as he stood up. "For now: sleep."
Which, she debated with herself when that sleep refused to come, of all the routes to the truth that lay before her, was the unlikeliest path? She had been given several alternatives: by Gomm, by Klein, by her own common sense. All of them were temptingly improbable. All, like the path that had brought her here, unmarked as to their final destination. She had suffered the consequence of her perversity in following that track of course; here she was, weary and battered, locked up with little hope of escape. But that perversity was her nature – perhaps, as Ronald had once said, the one indisputable fact about her. If she disregarded that instinct now, despite all it had brought her to, she was lost. She lay awake, turning the available alternatives over in her head. By morning she had made up her mind.
She waited all day, hoping Gomm would come, but she wasn't surprised when he failed to show. It was possible that events of the previous evening had landed him in deeper trouble than even he could talk his way out of. She was not left entirely to herself however. Guillemot came and went, with food, with drink and – in the middle of the afternoon – with playing cards. She picked up the gist of five-card poker quite rapidly, and they passed a contented hour or two playing, while the air carried shouts from the courtyard where the bedlamites were racing frogs. "Do you think you could arrange for me to have a bath, or at least a shower?" she asked him when he came back for her dinner tray that evening. "It's getting so that I don't like my own company."
He actually smiled as he responded. "I'll find out for you."
"Would you?" she gushed. "That's very kind."
He returned an hour later to tell her that dispensation had been sought and granted; would she like to accompany him to the showers?
"Are you going to scrub my back?" she casually enquired.
Guillemot's eyes flickered with panic at the remark, and his ears flushed beetroot red. "Please follow me," he said. Obediently, she followed, trying to keep a mental picture of their route should she want to retrace it later, without her custodian.
The facilities he brought her to were far from primitive, and she regretted, walking into the mirrored bathroom, that actually washing was not high on her list of priorities. Never mind; cleanliness was for another day. "I'll be outside the door," Guillemot said.
"That's reassuring," she replied, offering him a look she trusted he would interpret as promising, and closed the door. Then she ran the shower as hot as it would go, until steam began to cloud the room, and went down on her hands and knees to soap the floor. When the bathroom was sufficiently veiled and the floor sufficiently slick, she called Guillemot. She might have been flattered by the speed of his response, but she was too busy stepping behind him as he fumbled in the steam, and giving him a hefty push. He slid on the floor, and stumbled against the shower, yelping as scalding water met his scalp. His automatic rifle clattered to the floor, and by the time he was righting himself she had it in her hand, and pointed at his torso, a substantial target. Though she was no sharp-shooter, and her hands were trembling, a blind woman couldn't have missed at such a range; she knew it, and so did Guillemot. He put his hands up.
"Don't shoot."
"If you move a muscle -”
"Please… don't shoot."
"Now… you're going to take me to Mr. Gomm and the others. Quickly and quietly."
"Why?"
"Just take me," she said, gesturing with the rifle that he should lead the way out of the bathroom. "And if you try to do anything clever, I'll shoot you in the back," she said. "I know it's not very manly, but then I'm not a man. I'm just an unpredictable woman. So treat me very carefully."
"… yes."
He did as he was told, meekly, leading her out of the building and through a series of passageways which took them – or so she guessed – towards the bell-tower and the complex that clustered about it. She had always assumed this, the heart of the fortress, to be a chapel. She could not have been more wrong. The outer shell might be tiled roof and white-washed walls, but that was merely a facade; they stepped over the threshold into a concrete maze more reminiscent of a bunker than a place of worship. It briefly occurred to her that the place had been built to withstand a nuclear attack, an impression reinforced by the fact that the corridors all led down. If this was an asylum, it was built to house some rare lunatics.
"What is this place?" she asked Guillemot.
"We call it the Boudoir," he said. "It's where everything happens."
There was little happening at present; most of the offices off the corridors were in darkness. In one room a computer calculated its chances of independent thought, unattended; in another a telex machine wrote love-letters to itself. They descended into the bowels of the place unchallenged, until, rounding a corner, they came face to face with a woman on her hands and knees, scrubbing the linoleum. The encounter startled both parties, and Guillemot was swift to take the initiative. He knocked Vanessa sideways against the wall, and ran for it. Before she had time to get him in her sights, he was gone.
She cursed herself. It would be moments only before alarm bells started to ring, and guards came running. She was lost if she stayed where she was. The three exits from this hallway looked equally unpromising, so she simply made for the nearest, leaving the cleaner to stare after her. The route she took proved to be another adventure. It led her through a series of rooms, one of which was lined with dozens of clocks, all showing different times; the next of which contained upwards of fifty black telephones; the third and largest was lined on every side with television screens. They rose, one upon another, from floor to ceiling. All but one was blank. The exception to this rule was showing what she first took to be a mud-wrestling contest, but was in fact a poorly reproduced pornographic film. Sitting watching it, sprawled on a chair with a beer-can balanced on his stomach, was a mustachioed nun. He stood up as she entered: caught in the act. She pointed the rifle at him.
"I'm going to shoot you dead," she told him.
"Shit."
"Where's Gomm and the others?"
"What?"
"Where are they?" she demanded. "Quickly?
"Down the hall. Turn left and left again," he said. Then added, "I don't want to die."
"Then sit down and shut up," she replied.
"Thank God," he said.
"Why don't you?" she told him. As she backed out of the room he fell down on his knees, while the mud-wrestlers cavorted behind him.
Left and left again. The directions were fruitful: they led her to a series of rooms. She was just about to knock on one of the doors when the alarm sounded. Throwing caution to the wind she pushed all the doors open. Voices from within complained at being woken, and asked what the alarm was ringing for. In the third room she found Gomm. He grinned at her.
"Vanessa," he said, bounding out into the corridor. He was wearing a long vest, and nothing else. "You came, eh? You came!"
The others were appearing from their rooms, bleary with sleep. Ireniya, Floyd, Mottershead, Goldberg. She could believe – looking at their raddled faces – that they indeed had four hundred years between them. "Wake up, you old buggers," Gomm said. He had found a pair of trousers and was pulling them on. "The alarm's ringing -” one commented. His hair, which was bright white, was almost at his shoulders. "They'll be here soon -” Ireniya said.
"No matter," Gomm replied.
Floyd was already dressed. "I'm ready," he announced.
"But we're
outnumbered," Vanessa protested. "We'll never get out alive."
"She's right," said one, squinting at her. "It's no use."
"Shut up, Goldberg," Gomm snapped. "She's got a gun, hasn't she?"
"One," said the white-haired individual. This must be Mottershead. "One gun against all of them." "I'm going back to bed," Goldberg said.
"This is a chance to escape," Gomm said. "Probably the only chance we'll ever get."
"He's right," the woman said.
"And what about the games?" Goldberg reminded them.
"Forget the games," Floyd told the other, “let them stew a while."
"It's too late," said Vanessa. "They're coming." There were shouts from both ends of the corridor. "We're trapped." "Good," said Gomm.
"You are insane," she told him plainly.
"You can still shoot us," he replied, grinning.
Floyd grunted. "I don't want to get out of here that much," he said.
"Threaten it! Threaten it!" Gomm said. "Tell them if they try anything you'll shoot us all!"
Ireniya smiled. She had left her teeth in her bedroom. "You're not just a pretty face," she said to Gomm. "He's right," said Floyd, beaming now. "They wouldn't dare risk us. They'll have to let us go." "You're out of your minds," Goldberg muttered. "There's nothing out there for us…" He returned into his room and slammed the door. Even as he did so the corridor was blocked off at either end by a mass of guards. Gomm took hold of Vanessa's rifle and raised it to point at his heart.
"Be gentle," he hissed, and threw her a kiss.
"Put down the weapon, Mrs. Jape," said a familiar voice. Mr. Klein had appeared amongst the throng of guards. Take it from me, you are completely surrounded."
"I'll kill them all," Vanessa said, a little hesitantly. Then again, this time with mo re feeling: "I'm warning you. I'm desperate. I'll kill them all before you shoot me."