The Million Cities by J. T. McIntosh

Author:J. T. McIntosh [Mclntosh, J. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-5943-3
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

The reign of terror Senator Smith had demanded got under way very rapidly. The small, mild, unimportant case of Lorna and Rik Tenn was soon forgotten.

A man called Merle who publicly and very vigorously attacked the Senate for its inhumanity was the first to die under questioning. He was followed very closely by the first woman victim — a girl who led a public demonstration to an MCBI office. Her death was officially described as “unfortunate.”

Few died, however. Most suspects were released after interrogation. And the most terrifying thing about them was their silence.

Patients who undergo trifling operations in hospitals talk about them interminably afterwards. “Did I ever tell you about my operation?” All these operations, as described, were something special in the history of surgery. Nobody thought the patient would live. The hospital was in an uproar, doctors and nurses dashed madly about giving oxygen, adrenalin, blood transfusions …

Others, patients who undergo major operations, never talk about them at all.

And so it was with the MCBI’s campaign against the Chartists. Some suspects were released complaining bitterly of how they’d been treated. It turned out that they’d been given only the ordinary psych-tests. These were few. Most of the men and women released by the MCBI were silent, grim, and would say nothing about what had happened to them.

Soon hundreds of people were being arrested every day. The number of people who had died under questioning — information the MCBI never attempted to conceal — rose to fourteen, to twenty-three, to fifty. Another thing the MCBI never attempted to conceal was that some of these victims must be quite innocent. You couldn’t terrify blond people by declaring a war on redheads. If you wanted to frighten a whole population, nobody could be allowed to feel quite safe. Not even the innocent.

The public wouldn’t have stood for the campaign if it hadn’t been so dangerous to express horror over the situation. Most of the people being interrogated were simply those who said that the Chartists weren’t as black as they were painted, that these measures were inhuman, that Senator Smith was a monster, that the Million Cities had thrown off civilization and gone back to the worst days of savagery.

People learned that the way to avoid MCBI interrogation was to say nothing about it, show no interest in it, let the MCBI get on with its grim business. Smith became known as Butcher Smith for a while, but not for long. Half a dozen people who used the name in public were arrested and interrogated. One of these died.

“It will be over soon,” Senator Smith declared reassuringly. “We’re cutting out these Chartists like a cancer. Those who have died are almost certainly Chartists. Every day hundreds of new suspects are being reported to us by the general public.”

He didn’t say, though he might have, that few of these new suspects showed any real sign of being Chartists.

Senator Smith was honest and sincere for a politician. He believed that the Chartists had to be stamped out, and he still believed that his methods were going to do it.

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