The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [160]
“You about to clear a name from the board?” Q-Kee asked me.
Now it was Sarge who had his laugh.
At this point, I’d missed preparing my parents’ dinner, and since the trains had stopped, I’d have to cross the whole city in darkness in order to help them make their bedtime trip to the bathroom. But then I had a look at the big board, my first moment in weeks to really take a look at my workload. I had eleven active cases. All of the Pubyok together had one—some guy they were softening up till morning in the sump. The Pubyok close cases in forty-five minutes just by dragging people into the shop and helping them hold the confession pen in the moments before they expire. But here, looking at all those names, I understood how far my obsession with Ga had gone. My longest open case was my military nurse from Panmunjom, accused of flirting with an ROK officer across the DMZ. It was said she gave him pinkie waves and even blew kisses hard enough to float over the minefields. It was the easiest case on the board, really, which is why I kept putting it off. Her location on the board was marked as the “Down Cell,” and I realized I’d left her there for five days. I slid my placard back to “On Duty” and got out of there before the sniggering could set in.
The nurse didn’t smell so good when I pulled her out. The light was devastating to her.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, wincing. “I’m really ready to talk. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I have some things to say.”
I took her to an interrogation bay and warmed up the autopilot. The whole thing was a shame, really. I had her biography half written—I’d probably wasted three afternoons on that. And her confession would practically write itself, but it wasn’t her fault—she’d just fallen through the cracks.
I reclined her on one of our baby-blue chairs.
“I’m ready to denounce,” she said. “There were many bad citizens who attempted to corrupt me, and I have a list, I’m ready to name them all.”
I could only think of what would happen if I didn’t get my father to a bathroom in the next hour. The nurse was wearing a medical gown, and I ran my hands along her torso to ensure that she was harboring no objects or jewelry that would interfere with the autopilot.
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“What?”
“I’m ready to mend my relationship with my country,” she said. “I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to show my good citizenship.”
She lifted her gown so that it rose above her hips and the dark frost of her pubic hair was unmistakable. I was aware of how a woman’s body was constructed and of its major functions. And yet I didn’t feel in control again until the nurse was in her restraints, and I could hear the thrum of the autopilot’s initial probings. There is always that initial involuntary gasp, that full-body tense when the autopilot administers its first licks. The nurse’s eyes focused far away, and I ran my hand along her arm and across her collarbones. I could feel the charge moving through her. It entered me, made the hairs stand on the back of my hand.
Q-Kee was right to tease me; I’d let things slide, and here was our nurse, paying the price. At least we had the autopilot. When I first arrived at Division 42, the preferred method of reforming corrupted citizens was the lobotomy. As interns, Leonardo and I performed many. The Pubyok would grab whatever subjects were handy and in the name of training, we’d do a half-dozen in a row. All you needed was a twenty-centimeter nail. You’d lay the subject out on a table and sit on his chest. Leonardo, standing, would steady the subject’s head, and with his thumbs, hold both eyelids open. Careful not to puncture anything, you’d