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Rebirth 6

TOPS AND SOPS

Dusk Peterson

Over the past few decades, historians have gradually become aware of the danger of treating as solid fact any statement produced by an elite group of writers. A typical example of this problem arises in research done on the Thousand Years' War between Yclau and Vovim. Most of the writings that have survived come from soldiers of Yclau, who paint a picture of the Yclau people acting with charity and graciousness toward the prisoners they took during that war. There seems little doubt that the Yclau soldiers who expressed this sentiment were sincere in their belief that they showed compassion toward a vicious and ungrateful enemy.

Yet because of the length of the war and the consequent volume of material surviving from it, a few narratives by the primarily illiterate Vovimian soldiers have survived, and these soldiers paint a very different picture, speaking of the abuse they underwent at Yclau hands.

Some historians, citing such examples, claim that elite writings should never be trusted, and that when only the elite provide accounts of what happened, the truth will be forever lost to history. This seems a simplification of a more complex historical rule, which is that all writers, both elite and commoner, provide accounts written from their own narrow perspective, so that the truth must be pieced together patiently by the historian, who in turn must be aware of his own biases.

One of the great regrets of every historian studying the Golden Age of the Eternal Dungeon is that no "commoner" accounts have survived from that period. Every surviving writing from that time comes from the "elite," the men and women who ran the dungeon, including former prisoners who joined the elite. In no case do we have accounts from the commoners, the prisoners who were not offered the opportunity to help run the dungeon. Most of the Eternal Dungeon's prisoners were executed, while the few that were found innocent of their crimes and released into the "lighted world" were evidently so shaken by their experiences in the dungeon that they did not commit their memories to paper.

This being the case, historians must treat with skepticism the idealistic words recorded by long-term residents of the Eternal Dungeon, such as the Seekers. It seems likely that many of the prisoners had a very different perspective on how those ideals were put into practice.

It is sobering for historians to realize how many tales by prisoners will never be known. For example, a ledger has survived from the period of Layle Smith's High Seekership which contains a list that continues for many pages. The list consists of thousands of names . . .

—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.
 

CHAPTER ONE

There's only one thing I despise more than sops, and that's tops.

Sops are bad enough. I've had to work with too many of them; they go around talking about flowers and beautiful light and how nice the world would be if everybody was kind to each other. Meanwhile, I'm lugging a fifty-pound barrow of rocks and thinking to myself that the world would be better off if midwives examined every baby at birth and killed the ones who are sops. After all, we swat annoying flies.

Tops are worse, there's no doubt of that. While the sops are singing on about joy and love, the top is screaming in your ear that you'd better move your bloody bum faster or he'll smash your face in. He means it too. I think I was about eight when I realized that the world is one giant prison with us bottoms as the prisoners, and the tops as our guards and torturers. Seemed obvious to me that the only thing to do was for the bottoms to make a well-planned attack on the tops and tumble their bodies into the midden where they deserve to lie. By the time I was twenty, though, I'd given up on convincing anyone else of this obvious fact, and there's no point in trying to run a revolution on your own. That only gets you into trouble.

It's a pity I didn't remember that on the night I put a dagger into Mendel's chest.

Mendel was one of the "guards," by which I mean that he was a bloke who could have lived his life as a bottom, but instead chose to help the tops keep the rest of us imprisoned. A bloodsucking leech, in other words, and this one sure sucked the blood out of all of us at the quarry. I could put up with it where I was concerned – I've put up with a lot in my day – but when he beat bloody some poor boy who stumbled and dropped his load, that was too much. If there's one conviction I hold in life – aye, I do have a conviction, despite popular belief – it's that you have to look out for your mates. That's what gets me about the tops: they don't care about people, just about getting business done. I expect that Mendel would have sold his best mate if he'd thought the profits would help the quarry.

At any rate, I explain all this so that you can understand why, on the night they brought me to the Eternal Dungeon, I wasn't exactly filled with joy when I caught sight of two hooded men leaning over a table, in soft conversation with each other.

I knew what they were, of course. Every child in our queendom is brought up on stories of the faceless Seekers, the head tops of the Eternal Dungeon. Torturers of highest skill, they're said to be, who will crush a prisoner to dust and then trample on the dust while cheerfully singing.

Mothers will say anything to get their kids to shut up. I'd taken the trouble to ascertain the truth about the Seekers myself, during the three weeks I'd been at Alleyway Prison. There was a guard there who'd worked at the Eternal Dungeon in some exalted position like latrine scraper, and he'd heard information he shouldn't have heard, which he was quite eager to share with any prisoner who showed an interest. Not only a top, but a top who was a sop – bloody blades, I seem to spend my life surrounded by such people.

Anyway, what he'd told me was encouraging, but I wasn't prepared to discount the scare-tales of my childhood. If nothing else, I could see before me a ceiling-high slate tablet covered with prisoners' names, and a goodly number of those names were crossed out. I knew what that meant.

The first Seeker who looked up from the conversation – it's hard to tell these hooded men apart, but this one had green eyes – looked at me in such a glacial manner that I was prepared for a moment to believe every story I'd ever heard about the Eternal Dungeon, including the one about how Seekers hold parties when they're racking prisoners.

Then the second Seeker looked up, and my doubts vanished. I don't know why. There wasn't much to see within the hood's eye-holes – just an ordinary pair of blue eyes, looking at me steadily. I had a puppy once who used to look at me that way. It wasn't so much the Seeker's eyes as the way he held himself that alerted me to the fact that this was a different sort of man than the green-eyed Seeker. There was a certain reserve, a bit of hesitancy – it's hard to describe, but I've met enough tops to know which ones can be pushed and which can't. This was a top who could be pushed.

All the while I was thinking this, a conversation was going on between my guards and a little bald man sitting at the desk that the Seekers were standing next to. I didn't pay him any mind; I could tell at a glance that he was another of those bottoms who had become a bloodsucker. After a while, the bald man turned his head and said something to the green-eyed Seeker, who didn't reply. He simply shifted his gaze toward the other Seeker.

There was a moment's pause as the second Seeker flicked a glance my way. Then he said to the green-eyed Seeker, "Certainly, sir. I'd be glad to take care of this prisoner."

Sweet blood, they were making babies into Seekers. I might not have been able to see the youth's face, but there was no mistaking the nature of his voice: he must have been a good twenty years younger than me. This was going to be the easiest escape in the history of the Eternal Dungeon. Stranger though I am to soppish sentiments, I felt a momentary sensation of floating.

Then they put a hood over my head. I'm not sure who "they" were; it wasn't my original guards, who would have known better. Naturally, I let out a yell that must have deafened anyone standing too close, and I butted my head into the stomach of the man who'd put the hood on me. Aimed well, too; I heard his grunt of pain. I tried kicking to see whether that would do any good. My arms were useless, since they'd been bound, but I figured that, if the hangman was anywhere near, I had a good chance at crippling his legs and delaying the execution.

I got a whiplash across the back for my troubles; that told me that at least some of the stories about the Eternal Dungeon were true. It took my breath away for a minute. While I was recovering, I heard a voice say, "Please calm yourself, sir. No one is trying to harm you; we are simply preparing you for your journey to your cell. The hood will be removed once you're there."

It was the youth, of course; nobody else in that room would have made such a pretty speech to a fractious prisoner. For a moment I was filled only with sourness of spirit. Courteous tops affect me that way – they'll say "please" and "thank you" and then bring a staff down on your head if you're working too slow. I prefer a top like Mendel who doesn't hide his cruelty behind laces and bows.

Still, it didn't take me long to realize that this could be an advantage to me. After all, my plan required that I have a Seeker who was willing to listen to me, and this one evidently was the listening sort. I let the dungeon guards take hold of me – I could identify the one whose stomach I'd butted, because his grip on me was unnecessarily tight – and then I was marched out of the room.

I didn't hear my original guards say anything friendly like, "Good luck." They were probably hoping I'd be put on the rack my first day.

Well, the dungeon guards put me in a big, bare cell whose only concession to comfort was the chamber-pot in the corner. I've lived in worse. At least this place seemed tightly enough sealed that the rats wouldn't run over me at night. The cell was well lit and warm too; I had no complaints. Not that it would have made any difference if I had.

After the guards left – once they'd removed my bonds and hood, I'd seen there were two of them – I took a few minutes to ascertain that the only way out of the cell was through the door by which I'd entered. I didn't much care for the idea of exiting in that manner. I could guess that the guards were waiting outside, and I'd had a look at the guard whose stomach I'd butted; he was a big, burly, unsmiling man. I guessed that I was lucky to have gotten away with no more than a single lash.

No, my best hope for escape lay with the youth who had foolishly taken me on as a challenge. I lay down on the bed-shelf (it even had a pillow and mattress and blankets; the guards at Alleyway Prison would have called this place soft) and awaited my rescuer.

When he came, he entered the cell so unobtrusively that I didn't even notice that the door had opened and closed. He didn't throw anything at me or shout, simply waited for me to take notice of him. Then he said, "Good evening, Mr. Little. I'm Mr. Taylor, your Seeker. I trust that your back is feeling well?"

He spoke in a cool voice; I guessed that he was trying to imitate someone, probably another Seeker he admired. I decided it was time to see how far this youngling could be pushed. I continued to lie where I was, propped up on one elbow, and grinned at him, saying, "My back's fine. My boots need cleaning, though. Good thing you're here."

He stiffened, which told me a lot. A sheltered youth, probably brought up by some namby-pamby top who shielded him from the harsh realities of the world. If the youth's father beat his bottoms, he wouldn't tell the youth, so the youth lived with the illusion that the world was soft and sweet. A sop, in other words. Well, it hardly needed that to make me despise this Seeker.

"Mr. Little," he said, in that same cool manner that told me he was continuing to imitate whichever Seeker he hero-worshipped, "I'm sorry that I failed to make clear to you the rules under which I will be conducting your searching. One of these rules is that you and I must treat each other with mutual courtesy: you must stand in my presence and address me as Mr. Taylor or sir . . ."

I'd heard enough. I could guess just how far the "mutual" part of that courtesy went; I'd be expected to grovel and fawn, while the youth would act the part of the top. "Oh, lick my boots," I growled. "Or better yet, go lick the boots of that green-eyed Seeker."

He stiffened again. I seemed to be doing well with my assaults today. I wondered whether anyone else knew that he worshipped the green-eyed Seeker, or whether I'd just uncovered his utmost secret.

I waited for him to reply with more flowery speeches, but he didn't say anything. Instead he went to the door, knocked on it, and spoke briefly to one of the guards there. A moment later, both guards entered the cell. The burly one was taking the whip from his belt and unwinding it.

I didn't like the looks of this. I took a sharp glance at the door, but the second guard had locked it behind him, and I guessed that I wouldn't be able to wrest the key from either of the guards. I already knew, from the fact that the youth had knocked at the door, that he possessed no key. A wise precaution, that – I could have stolen the key from this baby in the space of a single water-drop. But that left me with no option but to strip myself of my shirt, as the youth quietly instructed me to do.

I'll spare you the details of what followed. The youth described it as "twenty medium lashes" – I don't know about the "medium" part, but it was certainly twenty lashes. It was hardly the worst beating I've had in my time, even though the burly guard put all his pleasure into it, so much so that the youth interrupted at one point to caution the guard to go lighter. There are advantages to having a sop as your Seeker.

By the end, though, I'd concluded that this one wasn't quite as much of a sop as I'd thought. Mind you, he followed up the beating by giving me a little speech about "this regretful incident" and "trust it won't be necessary again," and all the polite sentiments put forward by tops who are vaguely aware they're vile monsters. But he didn't say that he was sorry or look in the least bit disconcerted by the yells of agony I took care to emit. I concluded that he'd had a little more experience than I'd thought. Maybe he'd seen his father's bottoms being beaten after all.

Thankfully, he kept his speech short; I've met tops who will force you to stand for an hour or more after they've taken their belt to you. This one left the cell after a few minutes, saying that he'd visit again the next day. The guards followed after him, though the burly one paused at the door to gloat at my wounds. He did it silently; I'd guessed already that the Seekers had their guards well controlled.

No doubt they wanted to reserve the fun of torture for themselves.

By the time my Seeker arrived the next day, I was ready for him. Having learned how far I could push the youth – by the nasty experience of having pushed him too far – I was eager to put my plan into action. So I retreated a bit. I didn't act like I'd repented, which would have ruined my scheme, but I acted as though I had been cowed into cooperating at least a bit.

He bought it, of course. I got to listen to him give another flowery speech about my rights as a prisoner – I didn't pay much attention to it, except for the part about how the guards could only punish me upon his orders. Then we got down to serious business.

I'll say this for the youth: he was well trained. He didn't make any attempt to ask me questions about the murder. Instead he asked me a lot of nosy questions about my childhood and my mates and my work. Since it didn't seem to matter what I said – I think he would have been happy if I'd recited the names of the border rivers – I kept myself from falling asleep with boredom by telling him what conditions were like at the quarry. I needed to do this anyway, of course, to establish the number of people who had motives to kill Mendel, and I was especially careful to invent motives for Deems, a foul worm who claimed to be a bottom but was always running to the tops to tell them of mistakes the rest of us had made.

Slandering Deems was pleasureful fun, of course, but I was surprised at how much enjoyment I received from reciting the ill deeds of Mendel and describing the results of that stink-pile's maliciousness upon our work conditions. Even when I killed him, I hadn't known I hated him that much.

When I was through, the youth said, "It sounds as though Mendel was a vicious man."

I waited, but he said nothing more. No "But he was probably a good man at heart." No "Even the evil deserve to live." No "It doesn't matter how badly he treated you; he deserved your respect." I was beginning to find this youth a bit disconcerting.

I decided to take a detour from the path I'd been forging. "Some of my mates were saying that, in a just world, Mendel's murderer would be rewarded for getting rid of such loathsomeness."

His reply was quiet. "The wicked receive praise while the innocent suffer. That's the way of the world."

I stared at him for a moment, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice. I was obviously going to have to reassess the unworldliness of this youth.

"So you agree with my mates that Mendel should have been murdered?" I said.

"It seems to me," he said slowly, "that your friends are looking at the matter from the wrong side round. The question isn't whether the evil men of this world should receive punishment. The question is what happens to the hearts of men who decide to inflict such punishment on their own, in time of anger. It's quite possible, you know, to become as evil as the wickedness you're punishing."

I should have expected such twisted logic from a top; they can make the beating of a small child sound sensible. I shrugged and said, "Maybe. I'll have to think about that."

I gave it two more days. I figured that was long enough to pretend that I'd been eaten away with guilt by the youth's words. On the second day, when I heard him opening the cell door, I began emitting groans and wrapped myself into a ball. I didn't dare try crying; I wasn't that good at this game.

"I did it," I said when he'd made the proper enquiries. "I persuaded Deems to kill Mendel. I thought at the time I was doing the right thing, but . . . Oh, Mr. Taylor, you were right. Everything that was evil in Mendel I've become."

The youth didn't reply immediately. That bloody hood of his made it difficult for me to tell how my confession was going over with him; he just looked at me steadily with those puppy eyes. Then he said, "I'm glad most prisoners aren't as good at acting as you are."

I didn't do anything stupid like suck in my breath. I looked at him in a vague manner, as though not taking in what he was saying.

He sighed and gestured for me to rise. I decided not to take the chance that he'd call the guards back in. Unwinding myself from a ball, I stood against the wall, hunching myself as though from shame.

He sighed again and said, "You've been instructed by someone. A former worker of the Eternal Dungeon, or a prisoner who was allowed to go free. Your instructor told you that you should confess to a crime – preferably a lesser crime than you'd actually committed – and that you should express repentance. He said that, if you did this, your Seeker would do all he could to get any death sentence you might be given commuted to eternal confinement within the dungeon. Your instructor further told you that this 'confinement' would simply mean that you could not leave the Eternal Dungeon. You would be permitted to work here at any job you were suited for, in the same manner as though you lived in the lighted world."

Well, the youth was no fool; I'd already guessed that. That didn't make it any more pleasant for me to learn how intelligent he was. I tried again. "Is that true?" I said, letting my face transform into hope. "Is it possible I can receive mercy for my terrible crime?"

I must have gone a bit over the peak, for something in the youth's eyes ceased to look like the puppy I'd owned and began to look more like the vicious hound next door, who tore my leg to pieces when I was ten. He turned and went to the cell door.

I sighed and began peeling off my shirt. When the youth returned with the guards, his voice was cool, which I found even more disconcerting than the change in his eyes. I didn't think the coolness was due to imitation this time.

"You're a good actor," he said. "Unfortunately, your timing was off. I've been broken; I know that transformation of character doesn't occur that quickly. Would that it did."

Then his voice went as glacial as the green-eyed Seeker's look. "Sixty hard lashes," he said. "And the next time this happens, I'll put you on the rack. Do you understand me, Mr. Little?"

I understood him all right. He was a man like Mendel, posing as a sop. Those are the most dangerous sort.
 

CHAPTER TWO

If you're expecting me to describe what the youth said after my punishment, that's a sign you've never received a hard beating. I was barely conscious when the burly guard finished his work, and it was two weeks before I was able to do more than lie on my stomach and moan.

I had a couple of visitors during that time. One was a man claiming to be the prison's healer; if he was, he didn't know his work, because I got better during the time he treated me. He would have been dismissed as an incompetent at Alleyway Prison, where the healer might as well have held the title of head torturer.

Of course the other visitor was the youth. He didn't make any flowery speeches this time about regretful incidents; I guessed he knew that his illusion of soppishness had been penetrated. He spent a lot of time examining my wounds. I wondered whether he was the type of top who gets off on the sight of blood, and I had visions of what that could lead to. He must have been too busy hero-worshipping the green-eyed Seeker, though, because the youth made no attempts at what remained of my virtue – or perhaps I just wasn't his type. He certainly wasn't mine.

I spent the first few days imagining putting my old dagger into his chest, but that sort of dreaming gets wearisome after a while. Instead, I tried to assess my situation. The only plan I'd held for escaping from this place hadn't worked, and I'd received evidence enough that the scare-tales about the Eternal Dungeon were true. Mind you, the youth had implied that the soppish guard's tales were true also, but who knew whether to believe the youth's words. It was quite possible that every word he'd spoken to me was a lie.

So I watched him, and tried to judge from the tone of his voice how soon he'd stretch me on the rack, and felt myself grow more and more chill as I realized what I was facing. I didn't think of suicide – if I wanted to die, all I need do was confess to my crime – but I came to understand, as I never had before, some of the reasons why bottoms kill themselves rather than tops.

I spent a lot of time wishing I had access to silver pot-herb. I told you about those sops who go on and on about joy and beautiful light; well, I'd never believed any bottom who claimed this had happened to him. A mild glow when I was with my mates, exchanging stories about the horrors of the tops, was the most pleasure I'd ever received by natural means. My theory was that the sops had been ingesting silver pot-herb, because, as everyone knows, silver can give you that feeling of floating on air and being surrounded by piercingly beautiful images. I'd only taken it a few times in my life, because it has the nasty side-effect of removing inhibitions. I'd been on silver the night I killed Mendel. Not that I regretted killing him, but if I'd been sober I would have taken greater care to keep from being seen when I left his area of the Parkside district. Now, faced with a Seeker who planned to torture me till I confessed to the real reason I'd been walking around a top district that night, I wished I had some more silver to put me into a haze that would dull at least a bit of the pain. I was beginning to have sweating spells every time the youth entered my cell.

Then he brought me a xylophone.

It was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen, all etched with gold in the manner of top instruments. And it wasn't just lovely to the eye: its staves were silver-toned, the notes keyed just right and given the ability to echo each other. I'd heard of xylophones like that but of course had never had my hands on one.

The youth brought this treasure into my cell and placed it at the head of my bed-shelf, where I was still lying on my stomach. "Your school records said that you used to play this," he said. "I thought it would help you to pass the time." And then he left, not waiting for me to respond.

I spent an hour after that, staring at the thing, trying to figure out what form of torture this was. The best I could figure was that the youth would wait till I was attached to the jewel and then take it away from me. Well, if that was his plan, it wouldn't work. I'd never let myself get attached to anything but my mates, knowing as I did that the tops were likely to get rid of my belongings at any time. They got rid of my mates too, but I wasn't prepared to stop caring about my mates for that reason. If I did, I'd end up like one of those business-obsessed tops.

The xylophone stayed, and after that the youth's visits changed; he went back to asking about my childhood and my mates and my work. I'd reached the point where I could stand again, and I would watch him from a corner, trying to make sense of him. I'd met worldly, hard men. I'd also met unworldly, soft sops. But believe me or not as you will, this youth was both. I'm not making mock. He was as sincere about giving out xylophones as he was about giving out whiplashes. I didn't know what to make of him.

I suppose it was the xylophone that caused me to take a chance. We'd reached the second month now of my imprisonment, and we weren't getting anywhere; he was still asking me questions about the hell-pit where I'd worked, and I was still refusing to volunteer information about the night of Mendel's murder. The youth didn't look as though he was in any hurry to put me on the rack, though I was dead certain he'd yank me into the rack room if I told him the slightest lie. It appeared that his preferred method of breaking prisoners was to stay them out, waiting for the moment when the delay became too much for the prisoners and they began to babble.

Well, he could wait till he reached retirement age if that was his plan. I wasn't anywhere near to being broken, but I was certainly getting bored. The youth was spending most of each night with me – he kept strange hours – and we were beginning to cover the same ground over and over. In the remainder of my waking hours I'd play with the little xylophone and dream of the days when my mates and I used to make music together. There are certain songs that bottoms sing . . . Well, tops will never understand the appeal of those songs.

So I decided to break the stalemate finally. I told the youth, "I can ask you questions, can't I? You said I had that right when I first arrived."

"Certainly," he said. If he'd become bored by my endless tales of life in the quarry, he wasn't showing any sign of it. He reminded me of a mate I had who could listen to the same joke twenty times and roar with laughter each time.

"So where did you go to school? Was it in the Parkside district?"

Of course it was. He answered my questions readily. As I'd guessed, he'd lived a spoiled childhood; his father owned a fleece-dying business, with hundreds of workers. The youth didn't seem to want to talk about his family much – he was hiding some sort of secret – but he talked easily about his school and the mate-bonds he'd made there. That surprised me, I'll admit. I'd known in theory that tops have mates, but since the tops' minds are on business most of the time, they don't talk much about their mates. This youth talked quite a lot about his mates, saying he missed them; I gathered his work kept him too busy to go back and visit them. Well, that was more like what I'd expect from a top, but he sure had a lot to say about the boys he'd spent time with and the games they'd played. It made me wonder whether the green-eyed Seeker had paid him any mind, or whether the youth was spending his days lonely now. It would sure explain why he spent so much time talking to me.

Looking back on this, I can see that the youth's candidness was all just his devious way of trying to break me, but I didn't recognize it at the time; he was good at his work. There came the day – he must have been waiting for this day like a spider waits for its victim – when I took a deep breath and said, "I have another question."

He nodded silently. We were standing in our usual spots, me at the far end of the cell and him near the door. I hadn't liked to come too close to him since that incident with the hard beating. Sop he might be, but he'd given the orders for my lashing in a no-nonsense manner, and I still wondered how long it would be before he made use of the rack.

I took another deep breath and said, "It's about a mate of mine who got arrested a few years back. He was searched at a local prison – we heard about it later from one of his fellow prisoners. It seems my mate tried at first to lie to the men questioning him. That didn't work; they saw through him. But he knew that if he confessed to the deed, he'd be sent straight off to the hangman – unless maybe he said he was sorry, which he wasn't. A bunch of us at the quarry had a debate about what he should have done. It didn't occur to us to ask anyone who'd worked at a prison. What do you think my mate should have done?"

It took him a while to answer, and I can tell you, the sweat was pouring down my back during the delay. Waiting for the hangman is easy by comparison to waiting for your torturer to decide whether to fit you for the rack strappings.

Finally he said, "My advice to your friend would have been that he should be honest about his dilemma to the men who were questioning him – that would have been a start. Would you like to sit down, Mr. Little?"

I narrowed my eyes, trying to read his face; that bloody hood still made it difficult for me to tell what he was thinking. "I thought you had a rule against that."

"Not if you permit me to sit down as well." And he seated himself on my bed-shelf, cool as can be.

It was a relief, I'll admit. I suppose they make prisoners in the Eternal Dungeon stand for eight-hour stretches in the hopes of breaking them that way. I'd done sixteen-hour shifts since I was a youth, so that tactic didn't work on me. Still, sitting down made the conversation a little less stiff. The first thing the youth said that was important – he tended to rattle on about stuff that didn't matter – was, "Death isn't the worst thing, you know."

Easy for a top to say. I bet he'd never seen a mate die a violent death. But I lost that bet in the next moment when he said, "A friend of mine died when we were at school together. Up till that time, he'd lived a wasted life: he hadn't put any effort into schoolwork or into any side interests, and it looked as though he was going to spend the rest of his life in idle and useless pursuits. Then one day he saw a little girl in the street who was on the point of being trampled by a passing horse, and he charged in and saved the girl's life. He was trampled himself. This happened just outside the schoolyard, and a group of us came running and knelt beside him while the healer was being fetched. My friend didn't live long enough to be treated by the healer, but I remember what he said when he was dying. He said, 'This is like having a child of my own loins. Even after I die, my good deed will remain alive so that others can remember me.'"

Pretty fancy speech for a dying boy. I wondered whether the youth had made this tale up. It was all well and good for him to talk about men being remembered for their good deeds – he was a top. I don't suppose he noticed, when he was in school, that the history books spoke about nothing except the deeds of tops. But I'd noticed; I knew that, when I died, nothing I'd done would be remembered. I wasn't in any hurry to throw myself under the hooves of horses or let myself be led off to the hangman.

It was a clever ploy by him, though. He knew my weakness for stories about mate-bonds; he was prepared to use that as a weapon to break me. I didn't see anything I could do about that except try to be on the alert for his next trap.

Traps tend to be well hidden in the Eternal Dungeon. The youth had just finished telling the tale about his heroic mate when there was a knock on the cell door, and a guard entered – not one of my guards, but a strange one.

"The High Seeker sends his apologies for interrupting you, sir," the guard said to the youth. "He was wondering whether you could join him in his office when you were at a pausing point."

The youth offered his thanks for the message – I'd never met a top so infested with politeness – then turned to me and said, "Would you mind if we took a break? I'll be back as soon as I can."

As though a prisoner ever minds having a break from his torturer. Sometimes I wondered whether the youth really knew what he was doing, or whether he was living with the illusion that he and I were taking part in a pleasant get-together.

He was gone for a while after that, and I played with the xylophone and thought about the youth's dead mate. It must be nice to be a top and have people talking about you after you're dead. Mind you, I was sure that my own mates – who must think I was dead by now – were still talking about me, but that was as far as the matter would go. When they took me off to the hangman, nobody would put up plaques in the Eternal Dungeon saying, "A good man dwelt in this place." No top would remember that I'd lived.

The door finally opened again. The youth re-entered, and behind him followed the green-eyed Seeker.

I knew who the green-eyed Seeker was by now, of course, and this wasn't a pleasant turn of events. Even that soppish guard at Alleyway Prison had believed every scare-tale told about this man. I suppose my apprehension must have showed on my face, because the green-eyed Seeker said, in a surprisingly soft voice, "Forgive me for interrupting your time with Mr. Taylor, sir. I was wondering whether I might have your permission to stay in the corner here and do some work."

He was holding in his right hand a thin board with pieces of paper pinned to it; his left hand held a pen and a sealed inkwell. I gazed narrow-eyed at him, trying to figure out whether this was an elaborate prank, but he didn't say anything. So after a while I shrugged and said, "It's your dungeon."

"Thank you, Mr. Little." And with that, the green-eyed Seeker sat down cross-legged in the corner and began to scribble on the paper, for all the world as though he were a lowly record-keeper.

I tell you, that was the moment at which I began to wonder whether the burly guard had actually bashed me over the head upon our first meeting, and everything since then had been a weird dream. Either that, or I was in the hands of a bunch of madmen. I didn't much care for the thought of that: something about the way the green-eyed Seeker spoke made me think of racks. A madman who is in charge of a rack . . .

"Don't worry," said the youth quietly. "When he gets absorbed in documentwork, he's oblivious to everything occurring around him. He won't listen in on our conversation, provided that we keep our voices low."

As though it mattered to me which tops listened to us talking. I'd already figured that the guards were listening from behind the door, waiting for the inevitable moment when they'd be called upon to secretly record my confession. I shrugged, and the youth went back to talking about the glories of death.

The next few days were just the same. Every day now, the green-eyed Seeker accompanied the youth to the cell, apologized for his intrusion, and sat cross-legged in the corner, spending eight hours doing documentwork. Of course everyone knows that even the highest tops have documentwork to do, but this began to feel a bit creepy to me. Surely a man of his sort had more important things to do with his time?

My curiosity got the better of me finally, and I asked the youth. He glanced back at the green-eyed Seeker to see whether he was still absorbed with his writing, then said, "The High Seeker and I are working together these days. There's a rule in our code-book, though, that says a Seeker may not participate in the searching of a prisoner unless he's there for the start of the search. The High Seeker doesn't want to waste the three months you and I have had together by making us go back to the start, so he's waiting for your case to be finished before he and I take up our work."

It still sounded odd to me. Why should the green-eyed Seeker do his waiting here rather than somewhere else? Because it was becoming obvious that the top didn't like this place as a workshop. Every now and then his eyes would glaze over, as though he'd taken silver pot-herb, and when he finally shook himself out of this dreaming spell, he'd look angry, as though he hadn't intended for it to happen, and he'd scribble furiously on the paper. These glaze-eyed spells were beginning to grow longer and longer, and his fury was correspondingly increasing. I didn't like the looks of all this. I'd known one top who went completely off his head and started throwing rocks at the quarry workers. If a man like this went off his head, I could just imagine what he'd do.

Of course, when I was alone I'd tell myself that I was being silly. The green-eyed Seeker was simply as bored as I was with the cell and was impatient for me to confess my deed so that he could get on with his racking. When I said something like this to the youth, he agreed with me, saying, "Searching prisoners means a lot to the High Seeker. I was with him during a period recently when he was on leave from searching, and it was nerve-racking for him, having to confine his duties to documentwork. He managed to get through that period all right, but this time round . . ."

My interest pricked up. There haven't been many times over the years when I've empathized with tops, but this was something I was familiar with. There'd been a year after school when I was unable to find work, and that had been the worst time of my life. Having my fiancée break off with me hadn't helped either. I said, taking a stab, "He's got personal problems? That's adding to the pressure?"

The youth's gaze had drifted past me to the green-eyed Seeker, who was having one of his glaze-eyed spells. Usually the youth was totally centered upon whatever conversation he and I were holding, but occasionally, since the green-eyed Seeker's arrival at my cell, I'd sensed that the youth's mind wasn't entirely on me. Now he said, rather stiffly, "We shouldn't be talking about the High Seeker. We were discussing your friend's problem."

I shrugged. If he didn't want to talk about the green-eyed Seeker, that was fine with me. Truth to tell, that made me admire him a bit. I'd never known a top who was above back-slashing gossip that would cripple a man.

But I'd already guessed that this top was different from the others.
 

CHAPTER THREE

So things went on after that in the same manner. My mind wasn't much on our conversation these days; I had my eye on the top in the corner, wondering whether the youth would be able to control him if he started becoming violent. But it did occur me to ask the youth about some of the things the soppish guard had told me about life in the Eternal Dungeon. "He said that the Seekers aren't content with breaking a man's body and making him confess to his crime. They want to break the prisoner's mind as well, making him say he was wrong to have committed the crime."

The youth shook his head. He was sitting on the end of the bed-shelf closest to the door, with his back to the green-eyed Seeker, who was having one of his moments of furious scribbling. "I might have made that mistake at one time. I've come to believe, though, that it's wrong to tamper with men's consciences. Some prisoners truly do need the help of the Seekers to recognize their guilt, but there will always be a few prisoners who are so convinced of the righteousness of their deeds that you'd have to change them into a different type of man before you could convince them of their guilt. I don't feel qualified to transform a prisoner's character to that extent. In cases like that, all I'll aim for is a confession of the crime."

Well, this was news to me. He might have told me that from the start and saved me weeks' worth of nightmares of me being on the rack, screaming, "I was wrong to kill Mendel! I'm a terrible man for having done it!" The image of the screams had bothered me more than the image of the rack. I hated the idea of becoming one of those boot-licking bottoms who agrees with every bit of nonsense that the tops throw our way.

I was thinking about this, and thinking that I was lucky not to be in the hands of any other Seeker, when there was a knock on the door. The burly guard stuck his head through the door, saying, "Mr. Chapman would like to speak with you, sir. Shall I show him in?"

"No, I'll speak with him outside." The youth gave me one of his tedious apologies and stood up, walking toward the door.

The green-eyed Seeker had been scribbling all this time, oblivious even to the guard's interruption, but when he saw the youth open the door and begin to walk through it, he shot to his feet as though he were a child being abandoned by its mother. "Mr. Taylor?" he said.

I swear, there was panic in his voice. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there.

"It's all right," said the youth in the tone of a mother comforting her child. "I'll be just outside." And he left, closing the door behind him.

The green-eyed Seeker continued to stare at the door, as though expecting the youth to leap back into the cell. His board of papers had fallen from his hand when he jumped up, and now his hands were tightened into fists. He was beginning to shake.

This was bad; this was very bad. It was clear that the green-eyed Seeker was aware of his own unsteadiness and believed that he'd lose all control if he wasn't in the same room as the youth. And if he lost control, there was only one person in the cell who was available to be the target of his fury.

I decided it was time for a little force on my own part. Trying to keep as far away from the green-eyed Seeker as I could, I went up to the cell door and hammered on it. The burly guard opened the door. Beyond him, I could see the youth talking to another Seeker, no doubt discussing some trivial business matter.

"Look," I said in a loud voice to the youth, "can't you talk with this bloke when you're finished with me? I'm not going to wait around forever for you to get back to work with me."

I don't know what the youth thought I was going to do as an alternative to waiting for him – start a xylophone band with the green-eyed Seeker, perhaps – but he said promptly, "Of course, Mr. Little. Mr. Chapman, would it be possible for us to discuss this later?"

The other Seeker murmured something in assent, and the youth returned to the cell. By the time he got back, the green-eyed Seeker had recovered enough that he was sitting cross-legged again, writing on his paper, but I could see that he was still shaking. The youth looked over at him, then knelt down beside him and put his hand on the other top's hand. He murmured something soft in the top's ear.

That solved one mystery that had been teasing my mind: I'd been wondering whether the green-eyed Seeker had any interest in the youth other than business. I remembered my imaginings about the youth's hero worship. Well, maybe that was how their mate-bond had begun, but judging from the way that the green-eyed Seeker listened silently to what the youth was saying, it was clear who was the top in this relationship now.

It was disconcerting to learn that the youth I'd thought so soft was serving as leader to a top like this. Not that I let that stop me from being angry at his idiocy. I waited till the youth and I were seated together again, and I was sure that the green-eyed Seeker was immersed in his work. Then I hissed at the youth, "Don't you ever leave us alone again! Don't you realize he's on the point of breaking?"

From the tension in the youth's body, I guessed that he did. He said stiffly, "I apologize, Mr. Little. You were in no danger, but I should not have placed you in a position where you felt that you had anything to fear."

Typical top nonsense. They're incapable of thinking about anyone but themselves, so if you express concern over the welfare of another human being, they think you're worried only about yourself. Mind you, in this case I suspected there was at least a little concern on the youth's side for what was happening to the green-eyed Seeker. I've been around enough men who are best mates with each other to recognize that bond when I see it.

"This is ridiculous," I said, still keeping my voice low so the green-eyed Seeker wouldn't hear. "If you think he would be helped by getting back to work, why don't you just hand me over to another Seeker and go to work together on another case?"

"That's not permitted by our Code, unless it's in the best interests of the prisoner."

Bloody rules; I ought to have known that a top would worry more about business regulations than about his best mate. Even from a business point of view, it seemed to me that the youth was being shortsighted. When an owner becomes too ill to work any more, the business always suffers before a new owner is found. And if the owner loses his head and begins giving insane orders . . . I'd been in a situation like that, and the top had done a lot of damage before the tops working for him had gotten up the courage to throw him out of the business.

I'd seen the green-eyed Seeker's look when I arrived. I knew what sort of damage that bloke could do.

And that he was on the point of breaking I no longer doubted. It's never pleasant, watching a man slowly lose his mind; it has happened to enough mates of mine to sicken me. What I couldn't understand – I'll never understand this about tops – is how the youth could watch this happening to his best mate and not abandon his work immediately. What the bloody blades did it matter whether I or any other prisoner was broken, if his mate's mind was lost in the process? What is it about tops that makes them care more about running a business than about the people around them?

I was beginning to respect the green-eyed Seeker, though. Day after day he sat in the corner, his mind unravelling – and he was clearly aware that his mind was unravelling. Yet never once did he interrupt the youth's conversations with me or ask for any sort of help. It was bloody stupid, but it was the type of stupidity I could admire.

So I knew that matters had reached a crisis point the day that the green-eyed Seeker suddenly threw his writing board to the ground with a crash, pressed his legs against his chest, and cradled his head in his arms. His body was shaking again.

The youth looked back, made one of his idiotic apologies to me again, and went over to kneel by the Seeker. I couldn't hear what the two of them were saying; Seekers are the softest talkers I've ever run across. After a while, the youth helped the green-eyed Seeker to his feet and said, "I'll be back in a minute, Mr. Little."

He was as good as his word; he was back in the cell in one minute flat. The green-eyed Seeker wasn't with him. I stared at the youth in alarm. I didn't like the idea of a mad top wandering around the dungeon alone. "Where is he?" I asked.

"The High Seeker is waiting in the next cell for us to finish here," the youth replied.

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying; then my jaw dropped. "You're making mock," I said. "You locked your mate in a cell?"

He stiffened; I'd forgotten the top propensity for pretending they didn't have any special relations with the men they worked with. "The High Seeker thought it best that he wait next door," he said. "He didn't want to be a disturbance to our work here."

I don't think I'd been so angry since the day Mendel beat the boy. That was cruel enough, but to lock up your best mate when you know that he's on the point of mind-death, just so that you can finish a bit of business . . . I'd always known that tops' mercilessness knew no bounds, but I'd never imagined anything like this.

"You bloody idiot!" I shouted. "Get out of here! Go back and get your mate out of that cell, take him home, give him something warm to drink, tuck him into bed, and then sing songs to him or whatever you tops do to bring people back to themselves!"

"There's no need to shout, Mr. Little," the youth said in an infuriatingly calm manner. "If you don't feel like continuing our conversation today, I can come back tomorrow."

Typical top: you give him a gift, and he thinks you're asking for a gift. "Come back in two weeks!" I shouted. "I don't want to see you till then!" If he wanted to think me a frightened prisoner, so be it, as long as he took care of that mate of his.

Well, he returned to my cell the next evening, at his usual time. I would have bashed in his head, except that it was clear from the tension in his body that he hadn't had a good day. Perhaps the singing hadn't worked.

"Where's your mate?" I asked before he could speak.

"The High Seeker's location isn't important," he said. "Now, we were talking yesterday about a prisoner's right to follow his own conscience . . ."

I could guess well enough where the green-eyed Seeker was. I imagined him locked in the next cell, pressed all in a ball as he strove to keep back madness on his own, while his best mate engaged in chit-chat with a prisoner.

I'd just about made up my mind before the youth arrived, but that settled it. "Right," I said briskly. "I've decided to follow my conscience. I want to make my confession."

He looked startled; even a clever top can be incapable of recognizing what's in front of his nose. He recovered quickly, though. He called in the burly guard – the guards didn't have to strain to record my words from behind the door after all – and then he had me describe what I'd done. I was brief about it, saying I'd killed Mendel with my own hand, with no one else's assistance, and that I wasn't sorry for what I'd done. That seemed enough of a confession to me, but the youth insisted that I say for the record what I'd told him about Mendel's character and about him beating the boy. I suppose he thought that would make me look better at the trial.

I could have told him otherwise; I'd been in and out of the magistrates' judging rooms enough times not to have any soppish illusions. All the magistrates are tops, after all.

I was eager to get the youth out of my cell and back to the green-eyed Seeker, but he, being a top, was utterly oblivious to what was going on. I swear, I think he even believed I was angry at him for spending time worrying about his best mate. He would never have guessed that I despised him most for not putting his mate's interests first.

At one point he told me that he'd asked the High Seeker two nights before whether it would be possible to bypass the dungeon rule that prisoners could only be offered eternal confinement in the Eternal Dungeon if they repented of their crimes. Bothering his mate with business at a time like this! Honestly, the midwives must do something to tops' minds at birth to keep them from having any sense of reason.

After I'd given my confession, the youth insisted that he needed to spend time with me to prepare me for the next day. Since he was being stubborn about this, I made him send a message to his mate, by way of the guards, that I'd given my confession. I hoped that the news would be enough to pull the green-eyed Seeker back by whatever slender thread attached him to sanity.

The youth and I had a nice conversation that evening, I'll grant that. I wasn't much surprised to learn that he'd been a prisoner himself – his earlier remark about being broken had made me wonder – but it was a shock to hear what he'd been charged with, especially when, at my insistence, he recited the gory details of what had happened. Well, you never know about tops: you think one's a soft puppy, and you learn he's a cold-blooded kin-murderer. It helped me to understand, though, why he hadn't given me any lectures about what a bad baby I'd been. He wasn't really in a position to do so.

He was able to tell me what my trial would be like, and we talked a bit about the hangman. It turned out that the youth had thought, up till the last moment of his own trial, that he'd be executed. I didn't have any illusions about last-minute reprieves – the youth had been one of those prisoners who stated his repentance in his confession – but still, it was nice to talk about shared experiences. Reminded me of the times I'd spent with my mates, grousing about what we suffered under the tops.

There's not much more to tell. The trial was the travesty I'd figured it would be; the youth did his best for me, but I could tell that the magistrate had taken one look at me and started fitting me for hemp-rope. Afterwards, the youth wanted to accompany me to the executioner, but I told him that I wasn't like his mate, needing an escort. I was eager to get the youth out of there before he went soppish on me.

No such luck. He said softly, "I'll always remember you."

I laughed then, but he said earnestly, "I mean it. The other Seekers all say they remember their first prisoner."

"I was your first?" I was pleased, I'll admit. It's always nice to know that you've taken someone's cherry.

"The first and undoubtedly my worst," he said, all his soppishness disappearing in that disconcerting fashion of his. "If the High Seeker gives me another one like you, I'll go into retirement."

I laughed again, clapped him on the back, and said, "Get out of here. Your mate's waiting for you."

He left, laughing. That was for my benefit, I think; he knew by now how I hated soppishness. I was left to deal with a fool guard who thought I'd been assaulting a Seeker and wanted to warn me against making an attempt to escape.

Like I had any chance of that. The guards returned me to my bindings and escorted me out. As we were travelling down the corridor, I saw the youth again. He was with the green-eyed Seeker, who'd been at the trial, but who'd been seated at the back of the judging room, behind me; I'd caught only a brief glimpse of him till now.

I don't think either of them believed they'd be seen; they were in a dark alcove off the corridor, and their hoods were raised. The youth had his back to me, so I never saw what his face looked like, but I could see the green-eyed Seeker's face, because he was embracing the youth and had his head resting upon the youth's shoulder. The lines in his face were relaxed. I guessed that he had managed to make his way back to sanity by that slender thread.

Well, he'd better have; that's all I can say. The guards hustled me along, so I didn't see much more, but I caught the moment when the green-eyed Seeker raised his head high enough to give the youth a kiss on the cheek. It was the sweetest portrait of mate-bonding I've ever seen.

Bloody blades, what a sop I've become. I still don't understand why I did it. What kind of idiot bottom sacrifices himself for the sake of two tops, one of them someone he barely knows and the other his torturer? It doesn't make sense.

I'll tell you something that's even odder, though. I didn't eat breakfast before the trial – my stomach wasn't up to it – so I know that the youth couldn't have slipped any silver pot-herb into me. Yet since seeing those two tops hugging each other in the corridor, I've been floating, and everything around me looks piercingly beautiful. I can't make sense of it, but it's a nice way to go. Even the hood they just put over my head doesn't change how I feel.

Maybe the youth will remember me after all.

. . . The list consists of thousands of names, most of which have been crossed out. Prisoners who have suffered execution leave no records of their life.

We turn now to the (probably apocryphal) tale of Layle Smith's nervous breakdown in his thirty-sixth year, and how he was saved from madness by a prisoner who sacrificed his own life for the sake of the High Seeker.

As historians continue to emphasize, although Layle Smith's brief entrance into madness is recorded by a number of reliable historical sources, there is not a single piece of evidence from Layle Smith's time to support the tale about a prisoner being the man who drew the High Seeker back from his madness. Yet this tale appears in no less than a dozen ballads that were passed around among the Yclau commoners, and in modern times this folk legend has entered into the history books. It is a shame that we will never know whether this episode actually occurred, but it shows the power of the commoners to make their mark upon history in their own manner. Or as members of the Eternal Dungeon would have put it, it shows the central importance of the prisoners.

Several months after Layle Smith began to emerge from his madness of 356, a visitor to the Eternal Dungeon praised the bravery of the Seekers, who risked their lives daily to work among dangerous criminals. Layle Smith's reply now hangs upon the wall of virtually every office of psychology in our nation:

"Searching other people is easy. Allowing oneself to be searched is an act of courage."

—Psychologists with Whips: A History of the Eternal Dungeon.

¶ Historical Note

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