The Summons
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
The doctor smiled indulgently. “It’s not a graded test, Mr. Aaron. To be honest with you, this is part of a research project of my own. Entirely unofficial. It could be argued that I’m misusing my position, but it seemed like a perfect opportunity, since the people sent to me represent a random sampling of the adult population, to test the prevailing, uh, moral climate of Civil District One.”
“I see. So this has nothing to do with my civic work?”
“Only tangentially. However, I would greatly appreciate your signing and dating the test. When I’m ready to publish my findings, I’ll have to validate every document, you know.”
After Mr. Aaron signed the paper, the doctor tucked it carefully in his desk. “Thank you. Well, Mr. Aaron, that’s about all—”
“Doctor, pardon me, but could you give me some idea what my civic work is? I’m kind of in the dark about all this.”
The doctor leaned forward, staring strangely at him. “Now let me understand this. You mean to say you... don’t know?”
“No! The notice said ‘unspecified civic work.’ Nobody’s told me anything.” He took the notice out of the envelope and handed it to the doctor, who read it with widening eyes. When he looked up, his manner had changed.
“Hmm. Apparently there was a minor, uh, policy change while I was away on vacation, that someone failed to... will you excuse me for a moment?” He hurried out of the room.
The minutes dragged on. The room was too small, too cold. He found himself wondering how far he was from the nearest window. The doctor’s explanation for the test had left him unconvinced, and a suspicion began to take hold that he had not been summoned for civic work at all but, instead, to undergo some kind of psychological investigation. Was he really part of a random sampling, as Dr. Filaster had said, or was the summons directed specifically at him?
Dr. Filaster bustled back into the room, smiling in a way that was meant to be reassuring, but didn’t quite come off. “I could have predicted it!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Ms. Deering should have given me the memo this morning. But no harm done. You’ve been under some strain, no doubt, with all this mystery, I see that now. However, the powers that be... Well, we must cooperate, musn’t we? You, me, everybody, so the system will work. So...”
He extended his hand and Mr. Aaron rose to take it. His hand was mechanically squeezed, as if by a clammy pincer. “Thanks for stopping in. From here you need to go to room 715. There’s a private elevator you can use, much quicker. Just go left when you leave my office. You’ll see it at the end of the hall. And good luck to you.” As the doctor spoke, he was gradually propelling him out of the office, so Mr. Aaron barely had time to nod his acknowledgment of the instructions before the door closed behind him.
He went left down the hall, which extended before him almost to the vanishing point. There were no doors in this hallway, only the triangular light panels set at eye level into the walls in alternating order, appearing like parallel red lines in a dark tunnel that met in the distance. He had been walking for several minutes before he noticed that the passage had narrowed to a point where two people could not have walked abreast. The ceiling, too, had lowered; it was no more than three inches above his head, and he was under six feet tall. He was beginning to wonder if the doctor’s directions were correct when he spotted the elevator.
It was the smallest elevator he had ever seen, narrower than an ordinary doorway, and there was one button next to it: a red triangle. He pushed it, and the door opened onto a car that would barely accommodate three thin people. He pushed a cracked plastic button covering a hand-drawn “7” on a disc of paper. There were two other buttons: “C” and “9.” The doors closed, and the car started with a jerk, laboring slowly upward.
The fluorescent light buzzed and palpitated, casting the walls in leached-out shades of green and tinging his skin with a leprous pallor. The air was stale, oppressive. A claustrophobic pang shot through him, but he breathed deeply, and it passed.
The elevator thudded to a stop, the door opened and an icy blast of air hit him. He stepped from the elevator directly into a windowless room perhaps twenty feet square. There was apparently no other entrance or exit. Except for an electric clock and a calendar, the walls were bare and, like the floor and ceiling, painted a dull battleship gray.
In the center of the room, sitting with absolute stillness at a small metal desk facing the elevator, was a thin man of indeterminate age whose coloration — skin, eyes, hair, suit — so closely matched the color of the room, as if he were some rare indoor chameleon, that a quick glance might have overlooked him completely.
“Please sit,” the man said. Whispery yet penetrating, the voice startled him because it had come from that utter stillness. Not even the lips had seemed to move.
But they must have, Mr. Aaron thought. Human speech is usually accompanied by some movement of the head or hands. It was just the absence of gesture that had seemed strange.
Mr. Aaron sat down in the chair opposite and waited, his perspiring hands gripped in his lap. A name tag was pinned to the man’s thin lapel, and engraved in black letters was “VARNADORE.”
The man opened his desk drawer and drew out a silver pen and a long sheet of paper, his movements painfully slow and careful, suggestive in their tense precision of a far more dangerous enterprise than writing, as if he were deactivating a bomb. Bending over the paper, the man said in a brittle tone without accent or inflection, “Your name.”
“Andrew Patrick Aaron,” he answered.
The pen scratched across the paper while Mr. Aaron stared at the strands of gray hair pasted in exact parallel lines over the naked scalp.
“Age.”
“Forty-two.” The questions went on and on. He began to fidget. He hugged himself, chilled as much by the man’s manner as by the temperature of the room. Once he asked, “Is this room 715?”
The man looked up with narrowed eyes that seemed to search for the source of the sound, as if he had to orient himself visually to an unscheduled question, finally fastening on him with the unblinking stare of a reptile. “It is,” he replied, then went on with his questions. “Other than a minor traffic violation, have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense?”
“No, I haven’t.”
He slipped the paper back in the drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a green lighter with a red triangular stone set in it. His manner had subtly changed. He smiled faintly, without showing any teeth, perhaps fearing that the whiteness would give away his gray hiding place, but Mr. Aaron had the impression that this “friendliness” was merely the second stage of some ritual or procedure, the meaning of which eluded him entirely.
“Your cooperation is appreciated. Cigarette?” A faintly-trembling hand proffered the pack, and although he hadn’t smoked in months, he plucked one out and stuck it between his dry lips. He picked up the lighter, surprised by its solid, expensive heft, and lit it, noticing by the unwavering flame that the air conditioner had shut off, leaving the room uncomfortably cold.
Varnadore watched him closely, his sharp chin resting on his interlocked fingers, the pen still tucked between his thumb and forefinger, and when he started to hand the lighter back to him, the gray man hissed, “Keep it.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t take such a nice—”
The pen clattered to the floor. Varnadore ground his fists into his temples and shut his eyes, as if Andy’s words were unendurable to him. The veins stood out alarmingly in his forehead, and with hissing grunts that seemed to tear wounds in his throat, he fiercely enunciated through clenched teeth: “Keep-the-lighter!”
Aghast at the transformation, Mr. Aaron drew back in his chair, then stammered out: “Thanks,” and stuffed the lighter into his pocket. He sucked in the smoke, noticing with dismay that his hands were shaking.
Varnadore breathed deeply with closed eyes, seeming to draw the cold stillness of the room into himself. When he opened his eyes, he had regained his brittle control. “Don’t worry about the ashes,” he said quietly. “The purchase order for an ashtray hasn’t gone through yet.” He looked at his watch, then at Mr. Aaron, shaping his thin lips into something that was almost, but not quite, a smile. He waited patiently until Mr. Aaron had ground out his butt, then stood up. “We should be going now,” he said, gesturing toward the elevator.
Mr. Aaron stood up and faced him. “I would like...” He hesitated, fearing another paroxysm from Varnadore, then went on, struggling to keep an even tone, “to know where we’re going, and why.”
“To the tenth floor, where, presumably, you will fulfill your civic responsibility.”
“Look!” His voice boomed out so loudly it shocked him. “Can’t somebody tell me what I’m going to be doing up there?” he asked in a more subdued voice.
Ignoring the outburst, Varnadore said, “No, no one.” Then he added cryptically, “Not even you.” He stepped into the elevator and waited, not looking at him, his gaze blank, as if he had lapsed into the role of an aged elevator operator, entirely indifferent to whether his passenger got on or not.
Shaking his head in perplexed dismay, Mr. Aaron stepped inside. Varnadore pushed the “C” button, and the car began a slow, halting ascent.
The light, buzzing like an agitated hornet directly over his head, added to his tension. They stood shoulder to shoulder, about the same height, both gray-suited, thin with sharp profiles, their skin equally pallid under the sick fluorescent glow. But Mr. Aaron’s breathing was rapid and shallow, his palms sweating, his heart racing. And the man next to him, as if he could smell his fear, said in his most susurrant tone: “A relaxed detachment will serve you best in these proceedings.”
The elevator stopped, the door opened, and Mr. Aaron made a surprised sound. “C” was not a floor, it was a closet, lit by a bare, dusty bulb, the rack filled with what he first took to be black dresses. He took a step closer and saw that they were robes, with felt hoods sewn to the collars.
“Try the third one from the left,” said Varnadore. “It should fit you.”
He took it off the hanger and felt the heavy pleated silk, the impressive weight of the garment in his hands then, with cramped movements, pulled it over his head.
“A good fit, covering all but your hands and feet, as prescribed in the code.” He stepped behind Mr. Aaron and pulled the hood up over his head. “There.”
He turned around and looked at Varnadore through the small eyeholes, his increased respiration sucking the smelly cloth around the nose hole against his skin. The hood reeked of mothballs, dust, old saliva.
The door closed; they were moving again. He would have sworn the car was rising only a few feet per minute. The unventilated space was getting hotter and stuffier by the second, and as he stood there sweating inside the robe, his claustrophobic panic was returning, flaring up from the pit of his stomach.
He snatched off the hood and sucked air. “Whatever this is,” he said. “I can’t go through with it. I can’t! What in the world is going on here? A secret court? Some kind of test to see how I’ll react? You’ve got to tell me, you’ve got to...” He heard the shrillness in his voice, and stopped.
“We’ll be there in a few moments,” said Varnadore. “I know it’s hot in here, especially with the robe on, and the air is none too good. But I must ask you to put the hood on and keep it on. The law requires it.”
The bland, measured tones calmed him a little. He made a helpless gesture and pulled the hood up over his head. “Wish I had a cigarette,” he said, his voice muffled. “Got a nice lighter but no cigarettes.”
They had reached the ninth floor. When the door opened, they stepped into a hall facing a stairway door. “We have to walk up from here,” said Varnadore. “Watch that you don’t trip.” Mr. Aaron lifted the hem of the robe and followed him up the dark stairway.
When they entered the room and he saw the walls sloping up to a point in the center, he realized where he was: in the red apex of the Hall of Justice. Their footsteps echoed on the tile floor as Varnadore led him to the center of the room where, directly under the apex, was a large, stainless steel table bolted to the floor.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene
