The Inquisitor

When Conway Kroll reached his office that morning, there were three prisoners waiting to be interrogated. He smiled coldly at the sight of them, standing in the large bare room awaiting their fate.

"Good morning," he said, with steely politeness. "My name is Kroll. It is my job to conduct the interrogation to which you three will be subjected today."

One of the three—a tall, youthful-looking man—glared up at him bitterly. "Interrogation? Torture, you mean!"

Kroll brought his eyes to rest on the man who had spoken slowly, almost scornfully. "You have the wrong idea completely, my friend. It is necessary to persuade you to divulge certain facts. The State requires it of you. If you refuse—" He gestured sadly—"we must compel you. But you are all so determined to make things hard for us. I don't want to hurt you, you know."

"But you will hurt us," said another of the prisoners. She was a girl, no more than twenty, slim and darkhaired. Even in the dreary prison garb, thought Kroll, she retained her beauty. "You're going to torture us!"

Kroll shrugged: "I repeat: I don't want to."

He looked at his watch. "Come; we are wasting time, and the Inquisitor is waiting. Miss Horniman, you must be first."

The girl shrank back behind the bitter-eyed young man. The third prisoner, a resigned-looking, balding man of fifty or so, did not change his expression.

"Take me first," the man said. "Leave her alone."

Again Kroll shrugged. "The Inquisitor would like Miss Horniman first, Mr. Leslie. This is the preferred order, and this is the order that will be."

A guard stepped forward and shoved the sobbing girl up and ahead, toward the door. The man named Leslie clashed his manacles impotently together and spat. "Butchers! Torturers!"

"Please, Mr. Leslie," Kroll said gently, a pained expression on his face. "You make our job even harder than it is."

He followed the girl into the adjoining room, where the Inquisitor was waiting. The Interrogation Chamber was an immense rectangular room with concrete floor and bleak white walls, in the center of which stood the Inquisitor.

"Good morning, Kroll," the Inquisitor said. Its metallic voice rattled and boomed in the big room. In the depths of the machine, relays clicked and hummed. Kroll bowed to it, and the Inquisitor responded with a gesture of a prolonged metal arm. "The first prisoner, Kroll."

"Miss Florence Horniman," Kroll said. "Accused of treason against the State. Denies charge."

"How do you plead?" the machine asked coldly.

"Not guilty," stammered the girl.

Two huge metal arms extended from the Inquisitor's sides and folded around her. They drew her across the room to the bosom of the robot. "Feed in the data, Kroll."

At the signal, Kroll slipped in the tape on the girl. A moment passed while the Inquisitor digested the data, and then: "The plea of not guilty is rejected as invalid."

"You can't just do that!" the girl said. "That's my plea!"

"Not valid in view of the evidence," said the Inquisitor. Kroll smiled distantly. He had seen this scene repeated, over and over, almost every day for the ten years he had held the post. He wrapped his blue-and-gold Interrogator's cloak around himself impressively and stepped forward.

"You are accused of treason against the State," Kroll said sonorously. "But it is my duty to inform you that your sentence may be mitigated upon your delivering us certain information—about leaders of your movement, future plans, location of your party cell, and so forth."

Florence Horniman's eyes flashed brightly. "I won't tell you anything!"

"Perhaps I did not make myself clear," Kroll said. He repeated his offer.

"The answer is still no!"

Kroll sighed. "Very well," he said. A third hand slid from the Inquisitor's body and a needle-thin finger traced a line down the girl's bare arm. A bloody trickle appeared.

She began to sob again. Kroll stepped closer and lifted her head. "Why must you hold out?" he asked. "Why don't you speak?"

Still silence. The finger rose again and sliced lightly across her cheek.

"All right, take her away," Kroll said when twenty minutes had passed. The Inquisitor was humming merrily, busily taping the data that had been extracted from the girl and feeding it to the main computers downstairs. They would integrate it and notify the State Police. It was a smooth-functioning system.

The bloody thing that had been Florence Horniman was led away by a guard, and the next prisoner led in. It was the middle-aged man, Chester Wengrove.

"Get your hands off me," he snapped to the guard as he was shoved into the room. "You have no right to—"

"Unfortunately, as a representative of the State he has every right," Kroll said calmly. He fed Wengrove's tape to the Inquisitor. The trial proceeded.

Wengrove was stubborn; it took half an hour to break him down at all, but when he did speak he sang freely, giving data on his cell of the Movement.

"Very good," the Inquisitor said when Wengrove finally coughed and said he knew no more. "You are completely exonerated from the charge of treason, in view of the information you have given."

The eyes in the bloody face lit up. "I'm free, you mean?"

"Unfortunately, no," the Inquisitor said. "Because of your danger to the State, you must be kept in Quarantine Camp, along with other diseased former members of society, until such time as we are able to clear your mind of its confusion. But you will not be punished."

"I won't be punished?" Wengrove repeated mindlessly.

"When the Inquisitor says something, it means it," Kroll said. "Take him away."

The next prisoner was Neil Leslie. He strode into the Inquisitor's Chamber without having to be pushed, and confronted Kroll defiantly. "My turn, eh?"

Kroll nodded. "Your companions have both been removed." He nodded meaningful toward the Inquisitor, whose claws were red with the blood of Florence Horniman and Chester Wengrove. "They both spoke most satisfactorily——after some persuasion."

"Torture, you mean."

"We've been through this already," Kroll said. "Since you're going to talk anyway, I don't understand why you can't save yourself a great deal of pain by talking now, before I hand you to the Inquisitor."

"Because I don't mean to talk at all," Leslie said. He ran a hand through his shock of blonde hair and glared fiercely at Kroll.

"Very well," the Interrogator said. He stepped to the robot and slipped in Neil Leslie's tape.

"I don't understand you at all," Kroll admitted, looking down at the pain-racked body before him. "Why don't you talk? I don't want to keep you in here, you know."

Bloodshot eyes looked back at him, eyes clouded with pain and hatred. "I'm not saying anything," Leslie murmured. "Oil up your robot and let's try again."

For the hundredth time the Inquisitor's talons descended, raked a red line across the man's body. He shuddered, but did not speak. Kroll shook his head impatiently. No prisoner had ever held out against the Inquisitor this long before. He found himself perspiring.

The Inquisitor said, "The name of your leader is David Cosbro. Is this true?"

No answer.

A needle descended.

Still no answer.

"Your Cell was located in East Appalachia. Upper Quadrant. Is this true?"

No answer again.

Minutes passed, minutes in which Leslie continued to stare defiantly outward, continued to clench his fists and remain silent.

Finally the Inquisitor opened its tightly-clamped arms and let Leslie stagger out. He slumped to the ground at the feet of the robot and leaned dazedly against the Inquisitor's gleaming base.

"Prisoner is on the verge of death," the Inquisitor said. "Further questioning is pointless."

Kroll looked down in surprise and chagrin. In ten years, this was the first time a prisoner had not broken under Interrogation. He scowled angrily; it was his first failure.

"You're a stubborn man, Leslie. But it's killed you."

"I'm not dead yet," the prisoner said brokenly. Suddenly he mustered some strength and managed to look up. "Tell me something, Kroll. I want to know something."

"Yes?"

"Why do you do what you do?"

"You mean—Interrogate?"

"I mean torture," Leslie said.

"I am an Interrogator because it is my duty to the State. Treason must be unmasked, the enemies of the State destroyed. It is necessary."

Leslie looked up, and there seemed to be pity in his eyes. "Just one question, Kroll. Doesn't it bother you, when you go home? How do you know you're right and we're wrong?"

Kroll started to say something, then saw there was no point in bothering.

"Prisoner is dead," said the Inquisitor.

"Take him away," ordered Kroll. The day was over.

What Leslie had said preyed on Kroll's mind all the way home. He got out of the tube and made his way to his austere room with his mind fixed on one question—the snarling words the dying prisoner had hurled at him: How do you know you're right and we're wrong?

They had to be wrong, Kroll told himself firmly. The State had to be right. It was necessary; it was logical; it was the way things had always been.

But the thought obsessed him, and the image of Neil Leslie's face, bloody but undefeated, hung before him as he went about his evening's activities. The face was still in his mind as he prepared to go to bed.

Odd, Kroll thought. This was the first time he had been disturbed after a torture session. He had seen hundreds—no, thousands—pass through the Inquisitor, come out shambling rags of bone and flesh, and it had never bothered him, because they were enemies of the State and deserved no more.

He dropped off into an uneasy sleep. But suddenly, in the small hours of the night, he sat bolt upright in bed, a cold, clammy perspiration breaking out on him.

Leslie had just asked the question for the hundredth time. And Kroll had had no answer. He didn't know who was right. He just didn't know. His mind, unswervingly loyal for so many years, swayed in an agony of doubt.

He got out of bed and paced back and forth across the floor of his room.

"The State is wrong!" he said aloud. But it didn't sound right. It couldn't be true. It wasn't true. "Stupid!" he told himself. It was stupid to distrust the State—and wrong. "Wrong! Criminally, disgustingly wrong!"

There! He felt better. He had rid himself of his foolish doubts. "How could I have been so foolish?" he said aloud. His nerves felt better now. Once again he was ready to do his duty as a loyal officer of the State.

Smiling to himself for being so easily disturbed by the remarks of disloyal traitors, he climbed back into bed and closed his eyes. A few moments later, he was asleep.

In the morning, everything seemed to be all right; the terrors of the last twelve hours were pale things of the past, no longer exerting pressure on him. He caught the tube and headed to the Ministry.

He donned his uniform in the locker room and took the elevator to the Interrogation Floor. He stepped into his office. It was empty. No prisoners this morning? It didn't seem likely.

He pushed open the inner door and entered the Interrogation Chamber. To his surprise, he saw Matthews, one of his assistants, wearing the uniform of an Interrogator and standing near the robot, arms folded.

"What are you doing in here dressed that way?" Kroll snapped.

"I am the new Interrogator," Matthews told him.

"Since when?"

"The appointment was made very early this morning," the Inquisitor said. "We have all the evidence we need to brand you as a traitor to the State."

The new Interrogator turned a switch, and Kroll heard his own voice come from a speaker. "The State is wrong! Stupid! Wrong! Criminally, disgustingly wrong! How could I have been so foolish?"

"There is no need to deny these words," said the Interrogator. "It is only necessary that you tell us with whom you have been working."

"But there's no one!" Kroll shouted. "You don't understand! I'm loyal! I can explain!"

But the new Interrogator merely looked cold as the long, chilling metal arms of the Inquisitor reached out and gathered Kroll to its steel bosom.