Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts

Author:Adam Roberts [Roberts, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2021-02-04T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER III

:1:

They cuffed Gomery and put him in a police wagon, and he figured his friends would be put in there with him too and driven back into town to have a Serious Chat at the police station. But then the wagon drove off, and he was on his own, and he figured: Uh-oh, they’re splitting us up. That means this is more serious than I realized.

The drive took a real long time, and he thought: Double-uh-oh.

He still had his phone and naturally he thought about using it to make calls and check online. But then he thought: They didn’t take my phone off me. That’s usual in arrests, taking away the phone. They’ve left it with me for a reason, he thought, so I guess they’ll track anything I do. Use it in evidence against me. So he didn’t check his phone.

He had two heuristics for human behavior. He knew, pretty much to the millimeter, how far along the spectrum he was, and it wasn’t so far, all things considered. And he knew exactly how much anger was mixed in with his Asperger’s, and it was quite a lot. So when situations presented themselves, he would ask himself what would Ottoline do? and sometimes what would Allie do? Well, Otty was in custody too, so he could ask himself what she would be doing. That made sense. And one thing he was sure of: She was not ratting out the rest of the Five.

They bundled him out at a compact two-story building somewhere in the middle of the countryside. It was late afternoon, a pale clarity overhead bleeding westward into dusk. The Appalachians were just visible nibbling up from the horizon, so they must have come a ways west. Inside the building was a brightly lit room, two chairs and a table, and he was handcuffed to the table. He wondered if Kath and Otty were also being cuffed to their chairs as they were interrogated, or if it was just him, because he was male?

They made him wait, of course. It was Interrogation 101. He was only a kid, but he’d seen enough shows and reconstructions and read enough to know how things went down in this sort of situation. They were going to try to disorient him, get him confused and pliable, keep him on the back foot. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, though. Not this baby … baby.

The trick, he told himself, was to keep on top, to keep his head. Not to be discombobulated. Stay focussed. He repeated the phrase over and over, silently, in his mind, a focus-mantra.

Keep on top, in my head

Keep on top, in my head

Keep on top, in my head

After a while the phrase distorted with its repetition, the way these things do. It folded over. The phonemes smeared. He ended up saying

Keeping tapping my head

Keeping tapping my head

Keeping tapping my head

But what might that mean? Tapping his head, like a school bully holding his neck in the hook of his arm, and rapping his knuckles on the top of his skull? Not that.

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