At which Jazz had nodded, saying: ‘Well, that’s one of the things I’m here to find out. See, a lot of very important, very intelligent men in the West are worried about the Perchorsk Projekt. And the more I learn about it, the more I believe they have good reason to be . . .’
One night when they gave Jazz his pills, he didn’t take them. He pretended to, stuck them in a corner of his mouth, drank his water without washing them down. It was partly an act of rebellion – against what amounted to physical, even mental imprisonment, however well-intended – and partly something else. He needed time to think. That was the one thing he never seemed to have enough of: time to think. He was always either asleep or taking pills to put him to sleep, in pain or dopey from the needle that killed the pain and helped him talk to the Debriefing Officer, but never left alone to just lie there and think.
Maybe they didn’t want him to think. Which made him wonder: why didn’t they want him to think? His body might be a bit banged-up, but there didn’t seem a deal wrong with his brain.
When he was alone (after he’d heard them go out of his room and close the door) he turned his head a little on one side and spat the pills out. They left a bad taste, but nothing he couldn’t live with. If the pain came he could always ring his bell; the button was right there beside his free right hand, requiring only a touch from his index finger.
But the pain didn’t come, and neither did sleep, and at last Jazz was able to just lie there and think. Better still, in a little while his thinking grew far less fuzzy; indeed, in comparison to the mental slurry he’d recently been accustomed to, it became like crystal. And he began to ask himself all over again those questions he had been asking, but which he’d never found the time to answer. Like:
Where the hell were his friends?
He’d been out of Russia . . . what, two weeks now? And the only people he’d seen (or rather, the only ones who’d seen him) were a doctor, a DO, and a nurse who grunted a little but never spoke. But he did have friends in the Service. Surely they would know he was back. Why hadn’t they been to see him? Was he that banged-up? Did he look that bad?
‘I don’t feel that bad,’ Jazz whispered to himself.
He moved his right arm, clenched his right fist. The hole through his wrist had healed and new skin had knitted over the punctures front and back. It was pure luck that the point of the ice-axe had slipped between the bones and managed to miss the arteries. The hand was a little stiff and out of practice, that was all. There was some pain, but nothing he couldn’t survive. Come to think of it, there wasn’t much of pain in anything right now. But of course he couldn’t move everything – could he? Jazz decided he’d better not try.
What about sight? Would his room be in light or darkness? The ‘snow’ of his bandages was thick and dark. They said they’d saved his sight. From what? Had his eyes been hanging out or something? ‘Saved his sight’ could mean anything. That he’d be able to see, for instance -but how well?
Suddenly, for the first time since he’d been there, he knew real panic. They might have kept something back until he’d been fully debriefed, so as not to discourage or distract him: where there’s life there’s hope, sort of thing. How about that? What if they hadn’t told him everything?
Jazz got a grip of himself, gave a derisive snort. Huh! Told him everything? Christ, they hadn’t told him anything! He was the one who’d been doing all the –
Talking . . .
His new clarity of mind was leading him in a frightening new direction, and it was all downhill going; the more he considered the possibilities, the faster he went and the more frightening it got; bits of a puzzle he hadn’t known existed until now were starting to fall into place. And the picture they made was one of a clown, a puppet, with his name on it. Michael J. Simmons: dupe!