The Dark Tower - Stephen King [134]
The fourth tape is now three-quarters done, and Ted’s voice is little more than a croak. Nevertheless, he gamely pushes on.
“I hadn’t been gone long, but over here time had taken one of its erratic slips forward. Humma o’ Tego was out, possibly because of me, and Prentiss of New Jersey, the ki’-dam, was in. He and Finli interrogated me in the Master’s suite a good many times. There was no physical torture—I guess they still reckoned me too important to chance spoiling me—but there was a lot of discomfort and plenty of mind-games. They also made it clear that if I tried to run again, my Connecticut friends would be put to death. I said, ‘Don’t you boys get it? If I keep doing my job, they’re going out, anyway. Everybody’s going out, with the possible exception of the one you call the Crimson King.’
“Prentiss steepled his fingers in the annoying way he has and said, ‘That may be or may not be true, sai, but if it is, we won’t suffer when we “go out,” as you put it. Little Bobby and little Carol, on the other hand…not to mention Carol’s mother and Bobby’s friend, Sully-John…’ He didn’t have to finish. I still wonder if they knew how terribly frightened they’d made me with that threat against my young friends. And how terribly angry.
“All their questions came down to two things they really wanted to know: Why had I run, and who helped me do it. I could have fallen back on the old name–rank–serial number routine, but decided to chance being a bit more expansive. I’d wanted to run, I said, because I’d gotten a glimmering from some of the can-toi guards about what we were really doing, and I didn’t like the idea. As for how I’d gotten out, I told them I didn’t know. I went to sleep one night, I said, and just woke up beside the Merritt Parkway. They went from scoffing at this story to semi-believing it, mostly because I never varied it a single jot or tittle, no matter how many times they asked. And of course they already knew how powerful I was, and in ways that were different from the others.
“ ‘Do you think you’re a teleport in some subconscious way, sai?’ Finli asked me.
“ ‘How could I say?’ I asked in turn—always answer a question with a question is a good rule to follow during interrogation, I think, as long as it’s a relatively soft interrogation, as this one was. ‘I’ve never sensed any such ability, but of course we don’t always know what’s lurking in our subconscious, do we?’
“ ‘You better hope it wasn’t you,’ Prentiss said. ‘We can live with almost any wild talent around here except that one. That one, Mr. Brautigan, would spell the end even for such a valued employee as yourself.’ I wasn’t sure I believed that, but later Trampas gave me reason to think Prentiss might have been telling the truth. Anyway, that was my story and I never went beyond it.
“Prentiss’s houseboy, a fellow named Tassa—a hume, if it matters—would bring in cookies and cans of Nozz-A-La—which I like because it tastes a bit like root beer—and Prentiss would offer me all I wanted…after, that was, I told them where I’d gotten my information and how I’d escaped Algul Siento. Then the whole round of questions would start again, only this time with Prentiss and the Wease munching cookies and drinking Nozzie. But at some point they’d always give in and allow me a drink and a bite to eat. As interrogators, I’m afraid there just wasn’t enough Nazi in them to make me give up my secrets. They tried to prog me, of course, but…have you heard that old saying about never bullshitting a bullshitter?”
Eddie and Susannah both nod. So does Jake, who has heard his father say that during numerous conversations concerning Programming at the Network.
“I bet you have,” Ted resumes.