Story: Sympathy for the Torturer (part one)

Sympathy for the Torturer

(part one)

After his second arrest, after his home detention, and his project of sketching and labeling each inch of Mrs. Leonhardt’s house (unresponsive to her talk, because she could see he was busy), they allowed Anton to patronize the lunchroom again.

It was where he’d caused himself trouble.

He was under Herward’s supervision, and when Herward phoned from the walk, Anton would throw on his jacket. Mrs. Leonhardt would yell goodbye; it was a nuisance. She would say, hello, you’re back, when he was—

But he conceded her that. “Yes, I’m back, Mother.”

“Did you like your lunch?”

“It was calories.”

They didn’t put up gates to block traffic from one quarter to another. Your badge pinged every guard station, every hub and satellite station—by its thermal sensor the G.R.A. knew you had it on.

A dropped badge told on itself, that circle of signals drawn around you meant…

It meant a stranger to the capital had no hope of dodging off. Palma’s soldiers shared doglegging routes mapped in their heads, gave signs that said follow me, and the following was distant and cautious. Every dozenth, possibly, made it underground.

“What are you thinking of, Anton?”

They were on a concrete passageway, off a staircase that carried to five upper stories of a G.R.A. apartment block.

“Running to the other landing, going over the rail, jumping on a bus and stuffing my badge in someone’s hood.”

The door Herward knocked eased back. “Corporal Herward, ma’am. Did you cross yesterday into C-Sector, Rouge, at Avenue Zebra, just past building 27? Your badge registered a timestamp of 15.42.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know what the noise was. I honestly saw one of those packets of salt dropped on the grass, and I went to take it. I had a friend got dinged for pocketing one from the lunchroom. You see how stupid that is, can’t you? I just started my job, too.”

So they did these things. So that was how much you had to watch out. The quarry eyed Anton up, memorizing his pullover or the cut of his hair. He wanted to push in and apologize, not look like Herward’s collaborator. Like his witness.

“You’re free. You’re fine,” Herward said. The door shut, they left the woman; to Anton he added, “People have tried that. The sensors need to find a heartbeat. Free information for you.”

1

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part two)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)