Collected Stories

The Winner

When the author of this story was presented with the Edgar, the award that is given by the Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery novel of the year, he responded hut briefly with the shortest acceptance speech on record. “I don’t talk, I write,” Mr. Westlake said. He does indeed. Concerning people and science, and the misuse of science. Which, after all, is what the whole world is about.

Wordman stood at the window, looking out, and saw Revel I walk away from the compound. “Come here,” he said to the interviewer. “You’ll see the Guardian in action.”

The interviewer came around the desk and stood beside Wordman at the window. He said, “That’s one of them?”

“Right.” Wordman smiled, feeling pleasure. “You’re lucky,” he said. “It’s rare when one of them even makes the attempt. Maybe he’s doing it for your benefit.”

The interviewer looked troubled. He said, “Doesn’t he know what it will do?”

“Of course. Some of them don’t believe it, not till they’ve tried it once. Watch.”

They both watched. Revell walked without apparent haste, directly across the field toward the woods on the other side. After he’d gone about two hundred yards from the edge of the compound he began to bend forward slightly at the middle, and a few yards farther on he folded his arms across his stomach as though it ached him. He tottered, but kept moving forward, staggering more and more, appearing to be in great pain. He managed to stay on his feet nearly all the way to the trees, but finally crumpled to the ground, where he lay unmoving.

Wordman no longer felt pleasure. He liked the theory of the Guardian better than its application. Turning to his desk, he called the infirmary and said, “Send a stretcher out to the east, near the woods. Revell’s out there.”

The interviewer turned at the sound of the name, saying, “Revell? Is that who that is? The poet?”

“If you can call it poetry.” Wordman’s lips curled in disgust. He’d read some of Revell’s so-called poems; garbage, garbage.

The interviewer looked back out the window. “I’d heard he was arrested,” he said thoughtfully.

Looking over the interviewer’s shoulder, Wordman saw that Revell had managed to get back up onto hands and knees, was now crawling slowly and painfully toward the woods. But a stretcher team was already trotting toward him and Wordman watched as they reached him, picked up the pain-weakened body, strapped it to the stretcher, and carried it back to the compound.

As they moved out of sight, the interviewer said, “Will he be all right?”

“After a few days in the infirmary. He’ll have strained some muscles.”

The interviewer turned away from the window. “That was very graphic.” he said carefully.

“You’re the first outsider to see it,” Wordman told him, and smiled, feeling good again. “What do they call that? A scoop?”

“Yes,” agreed the interviewer, sitting back down in his chair. “A scoop.”

They returned to the interview, just the most recent of dozens Wordman had given in the year since this pilot project of the Guardian had been set up. For perhaps the fiftieth time he explained what the Guardian did and how it was of value to society.

The essence of the Guardian was the miniature black box, actually a tiny radio receiver, which was surgically inserted into the body of every prisoner. In the center of this prison compound was the Guardian transmitter, perpetually sending its message to these receivers. As long as a prisoner stayed within the hundred-and-fifty-yard range of that transmitter, ail was well. Should he move beyond that range, the black box inside his skin would begin to send messages of pain throughout his nervous system. This pain increased as the prisoner moved farther from the transmitter, until at its peak it was totally immobilizing.

“The prisoner can’t hide, you see.” Wordman explained. “Even if Revell had reached the woods, we’d have found him. His screams would have led us to him.”

The Guardian had been initially suggested by Wordman himself, at that time serving as assistant warden at a more ordinary penitentiary in the Federal system. Objections, mostly from sentimentalists, had delayed its acceptance for several years, but now at last this pilot project had been established, with a guaranteed five-year trial period, and Wordman had been placed in charge.

“If the results are as good as I’m sure they will be,” Wordman said, “all prisons in the Federal system will be converted to the Guardian method.”

The Guardian method had made jailbreaks impossible, riots easy to quell — by merely turning off the transmitter for a minute or two — and prisons simplicity to guard. “We have no guards here as such,” Wordman pointed out. “Service employees only are needed here, people for the mess hall, infirmary and so on.”

For the pilot project, prisoners were only those who had committed crimes against the State rather than against individuals. “You might say,” Wordman said, smiling, “that here are gathered the Disloyal Opposition.”

“You mean, political prisoners,” suggested the interviewer.

“We don’t like that phrase here,” Wordman said, his manner suddenly icy. “It sounds Commie.”

The interviewer apologized for his sloppy use of terminology, ended the interview shortly afterward, and Wordman, once again in a good mood, escorted him out of the building. “You see,” he said, gesturing. “No walls. No machine guns in towers. Here at last is the model prison.”

The interviewer thanked him again for his time, and went away to his car. Wordman watched him leave, then went over to the infirmary to see Revell. But he’d been given a shot, and was already asleep.

Revell lay flat on his back and stared at the ceiling. He kept thinking, over and over again, “I didn’t know it would be as bad as that. I didn’t know it would be as bad as that.” Mentally, he took a big brush of black paint and wrote the words on the spotless white ceiling: “I didn’t know it would be as bad as that.”

“Revell.”

He turned his head slightly and saw Wordman standing beside the bed. He watched Wordman, but made no sign.

Wordman said, “They told me you were awake.”

Revell waited.

“I tried to tell you when you first came,” Wordman reminded him. “I told you there was no point trying to get away.”

Revell opened his mouth and said, “It’s all right, don’t feel bad. You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do.”

“Don’t feel bad!” Wordman stared at him. “What have I got to feel bad about?”

Revell looked up at the ceiling, and the words he had painted there just a minute ago were gone already. He wished he had paper and pencil. Words were leaking out of him like water through a sieve. He needed paper and pencil to catch them in. He said, “May I have paper and pencil?”

“To write more obscenity? Of course not.”

“Of course not,” echoed Revell. He closed his eyes and watched the words leaking away. A man doesn’t have time both to invent and memorize, he has to choose, and long ago Revell had chosen invention. But now there was no way to put the inventions down on paper and they trickled through his mind like water and eroded away into the great outside world. “Twinkle, twinkle, little pain,” Revell said softly, “in my groin and in my brain, down so low and up so high, will you live or will I die?”

“The pain goes away,” said Wordman. “It’s been three days, it should be gone already.”

“It will come back,” Revell said. He opened his eyes and wrote the words on the ceiling. “It will come back.”

Wordman said, “Don‘t be silly. It’s gone for good, unless you run away again.”

Revell was silent.

Wordman waited, half-smiling, and then frowned. “You aren’t,” he said.

Revell looked at him in some surprise. “Of course I am,” he said. “Didn’t you know I would?”

“No one tries it twice.”

“I’ll never stop leaving. Don’t you know that? I’ll never stop leaving, I’ll never stop being. I’ll not stop believing I’m who I must be. You had to know that.”

Wordman stared at him. “You’ll go through it again?”

“Ever and ever,” Revell said.

“It’s a bluff.” Wordman pointed an angry finger at Revell, saying, “If you want to die, I’ll let you die. Do you know if we don’t bring you back you’ll die out there?”

“That’s escape, too,” Revell said.

“Is that what you want? All right. Go out there again, and I won’t send anyone after you, that’s a promise.”

“Then you lose,” Revell said. He looked at Wordman finally, seeing the blunt angry face. “They’re your rules,” Revell told him, “and by your own rules you’re going to lose. You say your black box will make me stay, and that means the black box will make me stop being me. I say you’re wrong. I say as long as I’m leaving you’re losing, and if the black box kills me you’ve lost forever.”

Spreading his arms, Wordman shouted, “Do you think this is a game?”

“Of course,” said Revell. “That’s why you invented it.”

“You’re insane,” Wordman said. He started for the door. “You shouldn’t be here, you should be in an asylum.”

“That’s losing, too,” Revell shouted after him, but Wordman had slammed the door and gone.

Revell lay back on the pillow. Alone again, he could dwell once more on his terrors. He was afraid of the black box, much more now that he knew what it could do to him, afraid to the point where his fear made him sick to his stomach. But he was afraid of losing himself, too, this a more abstract and intellectual fear but just as strong. No, it was even stronger, because it was driving him to go out again.

“But I didn’t know it would be as bad as that,” he whispered. He painted it once more on the ceiling, this time in red.

Wordman had been told when Revell would be released from the infirmary, and he made a point of being at the door when Revell came out. Revell seemed somewhat leaner, perhaps a little older. He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand, looked at Wordman, and said, “Good-bye, Wordman.” He started walking east.

Wordman didn’t believe it. He said, “You’re bluffing, Revell.”

Revell kept walking.

Wordman couldn’t remember when he’d ever felt such anger. He wanted to run after Revell and kill him with his bare hands. He clenched his hands into fists and told himself he was a reasonable man. a rational man, a merciful man. As the Guardian was reasonable, was rational, was merciful. It required only obedience, and so did he. It punished only such purposeless defiance as Revell’s, and so did he. Revell was antisocial, self-destructive, he had to learn. For his own sake, as well as for the sake of society, Revell had to be taught.

Wordman shouted, “What are you trying to get out of this?” He glared at Revell’s moving back, listened to Revell’s silence. He shouted, “I won’t send anyone after you! You’ll crawl back yourself!”

He kept watching until Revell was far out from the compound, staggering across the field toward the trees, his arms folded across his stomach, his legs stumbling, his head bent forward. Wordman watched, and then gritted his teeth, and turned his back, and returned to his office to work on the monthly report. Only two attempted escapes last month.

Two or three times in the course of the afternoon he looked out the window. The first time, he saw Revell far across the field, on hands and knees, crawling toward the trees. The last time, Revell was out of sight, but he could be heard screaming. Wordman had a great deal of trouble concentrating his attention on the report.

Toward evening he went outside again. Revell’s screams sounded from the woods, faint but continuous. Wordman stood listening, his fists clenching and relaxing at his sides. Grimly he forced himself not to feel pity. For Revell’s own good he had to be taught.

A staff doctor came to him a while later and said, “Mr. Wordman, we’ve got to bring him in.”

Wordman nodded. “I know. Bur I want to be sure he’s learned.”

“For God’s sake,” said the doctor, “Listen to him.”

Wordman looked bleak. “All right, bring him in.”

As the doctor started away, the screaming stopped. Wordman and the doctor both turned their heads, listened — silence. The doctor ran for the infirmary.

Revell lay screaming. All he could think of was the pain, and the need to scream. But sometimes, when he managed a scream of the very loudest, it was possible for him to have a fraction of a second for himself, and in those fractions of seconds he still kept moving away from the prison, inching along the ground, so that in the last hour he had moved approximately seven feet. His head and right arm were now visible from the country road that passed through these woods.

On one level, he was conscious of nothing but the pain and his own screaming. On another level, he was totally, even insistently, aware of everything around him, the blades of grass near his eyes, the stillness of the woods, the tree branches high overhead. And the small pickup truck, when it stopped on the road beyond him.

The man who came over from the truck and squatted beside Revell had a lined and weathered face and the rough clothing of a farmer. He touched Revell’s shoulder and said, “You hurt, fella?”

“Eeeeast!” screamed Revell. “Eeeeast!”

“Is it okay to move you?” asked the man.

“Yesssss!” shrieked Revell. “Eeeeast!”

“I’d best take you to a doctor.”

There was no change in the pain when the man lifted him and carried him to the truck and lay him down on the floor in back. He was already at optimum distance from the transmitter; the pain now was as bad as it could get.

The farmer tucked a rolled-up wad of cloth into Revell’s open mouth. “Bile on this,” he said. “It’ll make it easier.”

It made nothing easier, but it muffled his screams. He was grateful for that; the screams embarrassed him.

He was aware of it all, the drive through increasing darkness, the farmer carrying him into a building that was of colonial design on the outside but looked like the infirmary on the inside, and a doctor who looked down at him and touched his forehead and then went to one side to thank the farmer for bringing him. They spoke briefly over there, and then the farmer went away and the doctor came back to look at Revell again. He was young, dressed in laboratory white, with a pudgy face and red hair. He seemed sick and angry. He said. “You’re from that prison, aren’t you?”

Revell was still screaming through the cloth. He managed a head-spasm which he meant to be a nod. His armpits felt as though they were being cut open with knives of ice. The sides of his neck were being scraped by sandpaper. All of his joints were being ground back and forth, back and forth, the way a man at dinner separates the bones of a chicken wing. The interior of his stomach was full of acid. His body was stuck with needles, sprayed with fire. His skin was being peeled off, his nerves cut with razor blades, his muscles pounded with hammers. Thumbs were pushing his eyes out from inside his head. And yet, the genius of this pain, the brilliance that had gone into its construction, it permitted his mind to work, to remain constantly aware. There was no unconsciousness for him, no oblivion.

The doctor said, “What beasts some men are. I’ll try to get it out of you. I don’t know what will happen, we aren’t supposed to know how it works, but III try to take the box out of you.”

He went away, and came back with a needle. “Here. This will put you to sleep.”

Ahhhhh.

“He isn’t there. He just isn’t anywhere in the woods.”

Wordman glared at the doctor, but knew he had to accept what the man reported. “All right,” he said. “Someone took him away. He had a confederate out there, someone who helped him get away.”

“No one would dare,” said the doctor. “Anyone who helped him would wind up here themselves.”

“Nevertheless,” said Wordman. “I’ll call the State Police,” he said, and went on into his office.

Two hours later the Sate Police called back. They’d checked the normal users of that road, local people who might have seen or heard something, and had found a farmer who’d picked up an injured man near the prison and taken him to a Dr. Allyn in Boonetown. The State Police were convinced the farmer had acted innocently.

“But not the doctor,” Wordman said grimly. “He’d have to know the truth almost immediately.”

“Yes, sir, I should think so.”

“And he hasn’t reported Revell.”

“No, sir.”

“Have you gone to pick him up yet?”

“Not yet. We just got the report.”

“I’ll want to come with you. Wait for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wordman traveled in the ambulance in which they’d bring Revell back. They arrived without siren at Dr. Allyn’s with two cars of state troopers, marched into the tiny operating room, and found Allyn washing instruments at the sink.

Allyn looked at them all calmly and said, “I thought you might be along.”

Wordman pointed at the man who lay, unconscious, on the table in the middle of the room. “There’s Revell,” he said.

Allyn glanced at the operating table in surprise. “Revell? The poet?”

“You didn’t know? Then why help him?”

Instead of answering, Allyn studied his face and said, “Would you be Wordman himself?”

Wordman said, “Yes, I am.”

“Then I believe this is yours,” Allyn said, and put into Wordman’s hands a small and bloody black box.

The ceiling was persistently bare. Revell’s eyes wrote on it words that should have singed the paint away, but nothing ever happened He shut his eyes against the white at last and wrote in spidery letters on the inside of his lids the single word oblivion.

He heard someone come into the room, but the effort of making a change was so great that for a moment longer he permitted his eyes to remain closed. When he did open them he saw Wordman there, standing grim and mundane at the foot of the bed.

Wordman said, “How are you, Revell?”

“I was thinking about oblivion,” Revell told him. “Writing a poem on the subject.” He looked up at the ceiling, but it was empty.

Wordman said, “You asked, one time, you asked for pencil and paper. We’ve decided you can have them.”

Revell looked at him in sudden hope, but then understood. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, that.”

Wordman frowned and said, “What’s wrong? I said you can have pencil and paper.”

“If I promise not to leave anymore.”

Wordman’s hands gripped the foot of the bed. He said, “What’s the matter with you? You can’t get away, you have to know that by now.”

“You mean I can’t win. But I won’t lose. It’s your game, your rules, your home ground, your equipment; if I can manage a stalemate, that’s pretty good.”

Wordman said, “You still think it’s a game. You think none of it matters. Do you want to see what you’ve done?” He stepped back to the door, opened it, made a motion, and Dr. Allyn was led in. Wordman said to Revell, “You remember this man?”

“I remember,” said Revell.

Wordman said, “He just arrived. They’ll be putting the Guardian in him in about an hour. Does it make you proud, Revell?”

Looking at Allyn, Revell said, “I’m sorry.”

Allyn smiled and shook his head. “Don’t be. I had the idea the publicity of a trial might help rid the world of things like the Guardian.” His smile turned sour. “There wasn’t very much publicity.”

Wordman said, “You two arc cut out of the same cloth. The emotions of the mob. that’s all you can think of. Revell in those so-called poems of his, and you in that speech you made in court.”

Revell, smiling, said, “Oh? You made a speech? I’m sorry I didn’t get to hear it.”

“It wasn’t very good,” Allyn said. “I hadn’t known the trial would only be one day long, so I didn’t have much time to prepare it.”

Wordman said, “All right, that’s enough. You two can talk later, you’ll have years.”

At the door Allyn turned back and said, “Don’t go anywhere till I’m up and around, will you? After my operation.”

Revell said, “You want to come along next time?”

“Naturally,” said Allyn.