The Stranger - Max Frei [86]
Night was coming on. So as not to waste precious time, I tried to do what I truly know how to do well (and it wasn’t much): to chat with the objects around me, and to see that part of the past that they “remembered.”
It was hopeless. All the prison flotsam and jetsam that surrounded me answered my appeals with surging waves of fear. We had seen that before!—in Makluk’s bedchamber, where the little balsam box had sent out the same currents of terror. There was no doubt about it. I had stumbled upon a real story, not a chain of awkward coincidences.
Just then a guard appeared to “convoy” me to a business meeting. One of my guards, by the name of Xaned Janira, had been dying to meet me since morning, but the good commander had tried to preserve my peace and quiet, and ordered him to wait until I woke up.
Mr. Janira bears the title of Master Comforter of Sufferers. As I came to understand it, he was a sort of psychotherapist. He visits the prisoners regularly, asks them how they slept, what they are anxious or worried about, and what messages they want to send home. In Echo, prisoners are treated very humanely. It is thought that if a person has landed in Xolomi, he has no farther to fall, and to subject a prisoner to further discomfort and inconvenience is senseless and cruel. The psychological and emotional comfort of a prisoner is a matter of great concern, and this is, of course, only proper.
“I thought you’d be interested, Sir Max, in some information I possess,” Xaned Janira said, after the ritual greeting was over.
He turned out to be an exceedingly youthful fellow, with a round face and a melodic voice, and narrow green eyes that settled on me with a penetrating gaze.
“Strange things have been happening here recently,” he said. “I suppose this is the reason for your stay. It seemed only right that before investigations get underway you should hear me out. I’ve been waiting all day for you to call me, but I finally could wait no longer. At the risk of being importunate, I decided to take the initiative.”
“I ate too much for breakfast, Sir Janira! So much that I just couldn’t think straight,” I said, trying to excuse my behavior. “I should have turned to you as soon as I crossed the threshold, but I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I just collapsed in my cell right after breakfast. Forgive me. Thank you for inviting me to talk with you.”
From the expression on Xaned Janira’s face, I understood that at that moment he was prepared to go through hell and high water for me.
I don’t know what it was in me that won him over—the respectful “sir,” a form of address not warranted by the station of junior psychotherapist, or my willingness to admit my mistakes. Somehow or other, though, I had traversed the path to his heart without much trouble.
“Not at all, Sir Max! You had every right to rest before getting down to work. I just wanted to explain to you the reasons for my own persistence—I thought I might be able to assist you. Maybe my information will prove useless, but . . . well, just listen to what I have to say, and then you decide. Two days ago the prisoners from cells 5-Soya-Ra, 5-Tot-Xun, and 5-Sha-Pui, which are adjacent to cell 5-Ow-Nox, complained to me about bad dreams. Strangely enough, the content of all their dreams was very similar.”
“I can only sympathize with them, poor fellows! And what did they dream?”
“All three of them dreamed about a ‘small, transparent man,’ as they described it. He came out of the wall, and they all experienced inconceivable horror. From then on their versions of the dreams diverged. Malesh Patu claims that the transparent man wanted to poke his eyes out, and Sir Alarak Vass complained that he ‘was groping for his heart.’ The third case is rather amusing,” Janira related with downcast eyes. “The prisoner insists that he tried to plug up his backside. His biggest fear is that his next dream will see the attempt succeed.”
“Goodness! I wouldn’t want to be in his place.”
It sounded to me as though the prisoners’ nightmares had been an eccentric