The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [93]
Our library, of course, is really just a storeroom, but each time our team delivers a new biography, I like to do it with some ceremony. Again, my apologies for using that regrettable pronoun “I.” I try not to bring it to work with me. Shelves line the walls, floor to ceiling, and fill the room in freestanding rows. In a society where it is the collective that matters, we’re the only people who make the individuals count. No matter what happens to our subjects after we interrogate them, we still have them here. We’ve saved them all. The irony of course is that the average citizen, the average interrogator walking the street, for instance, never gets his story told. Nobody asks him his favorite Sun Moon movie, nobody wants to know does he prefer millet cakes or millet porridge. No, in a cruel twist, it’s only enemies of the state that get this kind of star treatment.
With a little fanfare, we placed the professor’s biography on the shelf, right next to the girl dancer from last week. She had us all weeping as she described how her little brother lost his eyes, and when the moment came to apply the autopilot to her, the pain made her limbs rise and sweep the air in rhythmic, graceful gestures, as if she were telling her story one last time through movement. You can see that “interrogation” isn’t even the right word for what we do—it’s a clumsy holdover from the Pubyok era. When the last Pubyok finally retires, we will lobby to have our name changed to Division of Citizen Biographies.
Our interns, Q-Kee and Jujack, returned out of breath.
“A team of Pubyok are there,” Q-Kee said.
“They got to Commander Ga first,” Jujack added.
We raced upstairs. When we got to the holding room, Sarge and some of his guys were just leaving. Sarge was the leader of the Pubyok, and there was no love lost between us. His forehead was prominent, and even in his seventies, he had the body of an ape. Sarge was what we called him. I never knew his real name.
He stood in the doorway, rubbing one hand in the other.
“Impersonating a national hero,” Sarge said, shaking his head. “What’s our nation coming to? Is there any honor left at all?”
There were some marks on Sarge’s face, and as he spoke blood trickled from his nose.
Q-Kee touched her own nose. “Looks like Commander Ga got the best of you guys.”
That girl Q-Kee—what cheek!
“It’s not Commander Ga,” Sarge said. “But, yeah, he had a nifty little trick he pulled on us. We’re sending him down to the sump tonight. We’ll show him some tricks of our own.”
“But what about his biography?” we asked.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Sarge asked. “It’s not Commander Ga. The guy’s an imposter.”
“Then you won’t mind if our team tries its hand. We’re only after the truth.”
“The truth isn’t in your silly books,” Sarge said. “It’s something you can see in a man’s eyes. You can feel it here, in your heart.”
Personally, I felt bad for Sarge. He was an old man, of large stature. To have that kind of size meant you’d eaten meat as a child, something that would most likely come from collaborating with the Japanese. Whether he’d cozied up to the Japs or not, everyone he’d met, over his whole life, probably suspected he had.
“But yeah, the guy’s all yours,” Sarge said. “After all, what are we without honor?” he added, but he said the word “we” in a way that didn’t include us. He started to walk away, but then turned back. “Don’t let him near the light switch,” he warned.
Inside, we found Commander Ga in a chair. The Pubyok had done a number on him, and he certainly didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d led assassination missions into the South to silence loudmouth defectors. He looked us over, trying to decide whether we meant to beat him as well, though