dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

Comments

[unmarred]

"I just stunned her," the clone says dryly. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Miles. She's currently quite comfortably unconscious in the back of a maintenance closet, wrapped in that fur-blanket thing. While you're alive for questioning, by the way, any bright ideas about what to do with that woman you hauled out of her burning wine shop? She's suing Admiral Naismith for half a million GSA federal credits."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Countersue for medical damages," Miles says promptly. "I threw my back out lifting her. Still fucking hurts... let my wife go, you fucking bastard!"

"Ignore it," says Galen, motioning for the guards to haul Miles back to his seat. "You'll be out of there before it can matter."

"And leave the Dendarii holding the bag?" cries Miles. "You faithless fucks! They bleed for me, they die for me, and you'd just - play polo with their heads - "

[unmarred]

"Is he on fast-penta? He doesn't sound like he's on fast-penta," says clone-Miles. "He sounds like he's on some kind of serious recreational stimulant. Is this another one of his weird drug reactions?"

"It may be," says Galen. "I'm beginning to doubt the utility of keeping him alive as a data bank, if we can't trust his answers."

"I wouldn't throw them out just yet," the clone muses. "Listen to him. He's not exactly inhibited. I think you can trust his answers just fine. Can I have vid records of the interrogation to go over later? I wouldn't want to miss anything."

"Fine," says Galen.

"And now I better get going. I'll report again tonight," the clone promises, and cuts the com.

[thisvorlunatic]

Galen proceeds to question Miles ruthlessly on a wide variety of subjects. Emperor Gregor's old problems with depression come out, as does entirely too much information about the Dendarii Mercenaries, plus fountains of domestic trivia about Miles's own life. But the interrogation takes an unexpected turn the first time a chance phrasing gets Miles started reciting poetry.

It proves quite impossible to stop Miles reciting poetry, even more so than when he recites anything else. The first one is just a sonnet, but the next time it's a filthy Dendarii drinking song, and the memory-enhancing effects of fast-penta let him deliver all forty verses, alternately weeping and shrieking but never stopping except to breathe. An enraged Galen leaves off hitting him once the last verse runs down, and instead asks him the next question; he's back on track for another five minutes, until he manages to jump himself off into a series of awful limericks about five-space navigation that he composed once while bored in school. And on and on.

But the true moment of glory doesn't come until Galen asks a question beginning with 'When'. He doesn't get any farther than that; Miles, primed now to seek these things out, jumps straight to the association. A demented grin lights his face, and he launches into a shrieking cackle of, "When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?"

Out of some dusty corner of his memory, the entire play spills torrentially forth. No amount of violence can stop him - and they do try violence. His awareness of the room around him, and his own body, fades in and out; his awareness of the words is a crystalline constant.

He's just coming in on the end of Act I Scene IV when his confused senses detect a change in his surroundings. Another prisoner? He can't quite see properly. Maybe they brought Galeni up? The play carries him on regardless. "...and in his commendations I am fed; it is a banquet to me. Let's after him, whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: it is a peerless kinsman."

Miles takes a breath between scenes and squints at the second chair.

[isthisart]

Linya, groggy from stun, notes one - no, two, hyposprays being applied to her person.

And Miles, reciting Macbeth.

Is she on the same -? What kind of drug?

She's definitely on synergine to wake her up, now that she's been tied to the chair safely. (Can she snap the ropes? Probably not, they're good synthetic stuff.) And the second one is -

She's immune, but not to the point of being a nonchemical robot. There is literature on what to expect if one is fast-penta'd. Futile, but not without trace. A subtle burning sensation, a little slipperiness in the mind.

And she's seen a non-haut on the stuff; there was a demo in one of her classes -

So she's supposed to free-associate, she supposes, and her captors probably don't know -

She chimes in with Miles's recitation, bewildered but not willing to let whoever's got them know.

"They met me in the day of success: and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles is still having trouble connecting visuals - but he recognizes Linya's voice under his own. He delivers the next few lines through hysterical sobs, crying particularly hard on 'my dearest partner of greatness'.

[isthisart]

Linya recites right along with him, pretending perfect dreamy calm the entire time. Miles can be having a Weird Drug Reaction; she's affecting the standard one.

[thisvorlunatic]

He calms down somewhat, but only somewhat - his voice is still a strained croak, his eyes still streaming tears.

And then Galen growls something about all his prisoners being useless and slaps Linya.

"TO HAVE THEE CROWNED WITHAL!" bellows Miles. He didn't even know he could get that loud.

[isthisart]

Linya stops reciting when slapped and blinks vaguely at Galen.

She's got a high enough pain tolerance (thank you generous ancestors) that she doesn't flinch at the slap, although her head turns with it.

[thisvorlunatic]

"What is your tidings—The king comes here to-night," Miles recites in a venomous snarl. "Thou'rt mad to say it - is not thy master with him who, were't so, would have inform'd him for preparation!"

"This is ridiculous," mutters Galen.

"So please you, it is true: Our thane is coming," hisses Miles.

[isthisart]

When no one presents her anything besides Macbeth for her to free-associate unhelpfully about, Linya chimes in. "One of my fellows had the speed of him," she sighs.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more than would make up his message," says Miles, calming down a little again.

Galen paces around their chairs and curses under his breath.

[isthisart]

Linya goes on sliding through Macbeth, keeping time with Miles, smiling at a corner of the ceiling.

[thisvorlunatic]

Their interrogator is apparently too incoherently angry to apply any useful questions to either of them. He hits Miles a few more times, then gets tired of that and commands the guards to 'just take them both to the cell'.

Rather than deal with untying her, the guards just pick Linya up chair and all, and one pair carries her between them while a third man hauls Miles.

By the end of Lady Macbeth's monologue, Miles is crying again. "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes," he sobs, "nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry 'Hold, hold!'"

[isthisart]

Linya recites and recites, dry-mouthed, pretending, assuming that of fucking course they're monitored and if someone has actual questions for her later she'd rather be fast-penta'd than tortured, considering there seems to be no qualms about the latter.

[thisvorlunatic]

The guards plonk Linya's chair down between the benches, shove Miles into the room, and close the door.

He paces. He rants. He weeps and howls, sometimes carried by the emotions of the play, sometimes by his own. He falls over Linya's lap and sobs iambic pentameter into her knees, then jumps up again and onto his bench to declaim the next lines.

At last:

"So, thanks to all at once and to each one, whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone," Miles sighs, sinking to the floor in front of Linya's chair and curling up there.

[isthisart]

Linya finishes at the same time and falls silent. She is still tied to a chair and supposedly on fast-penta so her possible courses of action are very limited.

"What was that?" asks Galeni.

"Macbeth," she answers.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Fast-penta," clarifies Miles.

[isthisart]

"You're joking," says Galeni.

"I'm on synergine, too," volunteers Linya dreamily.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I have a lot of weird drug reactions. Apparently my screwy metabolism and the memory-aiding effects of poetic meter are an explosive combination. My face hurts."

[isthisart]

There is not a prompt for a reply from Linya there. She silently continues to be tied to a chair. Galeni hesitantly approaches the knots as though expecting one or the other of his cellmates to object to him touching her.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles stays flopped.

[isthisart]

Galeni unpicks her hands. She lets them dangle by her sides. He detaches her ankles from the chair and she stays sat, but shifts her feet. "How long till it wears off you?" he wonders of her.

"A few minutes, probably," Linya pretends to guess. "Fast metabolism, generous ancestors..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"No kidding," mutters Miles.

[isthisart]

"Oh, no," she agrees. She flops her head onto her shoulder.