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you fucking whore, now arch your back, that’s it .
    A soft hum of mechanization from somewhere in the building reveals itself by stopping. The new silence expands like a gas, which when it reaches the guards brings them alert. Augustus loses the image of Harper and his girl, feels as if he’s falling, wonders briefly if he’s going to faint. He refocuses to find Harper studying him with a slight smile, as if he’s been tracking the line of his thought, as if silence is another medium through which information can be made to seep.
    â€œWe get to know each other,” Harper says, quietly, and Augustus feels suddenly tired, all but overwhelmed by the desire to capitulate, now, before any of what must happen happens. Years ago, walking Selina home from the antiwar rally in Central Park (to what would be, when they got to her apartment, their first lovemaking) she’d said to him, When I think of the millions of words wasted on the bogus task of working out what the right thing to do is it makes me fucking exhausted. We always know what the right thing to do is. We always know. She was full of absolutes she half-believed. Her political anger was really anger at the violence done to her by her own conscience. Secretly Augustus suspected she was waiting for a morally bankrupt man to seduce her completely so she could stop bothering. The great schism was that her older brother Michael had enlisted in the Marines. Love-hate, she’d told Augustus. It’s always been that way between us. He’s done this to spite me because…She’d gone further than she’d intended, now had to decide. I should have let him fuck me, she said. Least that way he wouldn’t be going off to get shot.
    We always know what the right thing to do is . It’s a long time since he’s thought of her saying that, though it was with him through the late ’60s like a flame in his chest. He knows what the right thing to do is, here, now—or if not that he knows what the old habit dictates.Drearily enlarged in understanding he feels morality like a presence in the room with him, imagines it as an idiot child he’s been conned into looking after all these years. People die without giving up the information because they believe in something, they transcend. Pain is total occlusion yet they see round it. Pain is beyond reason, an obliterating giant stupidity to which all your history of jokes and nuance and ideas and caresses is nothing, simply nothing, yet some people create a space it can’t occupy, an alternative dimension where the decision not to talk is held like a pearl in a paperweight beyond reach or harm. Some people you’re not one of. You don’t have the belief, the big idea, the first principle—only the motive like a word you’ve made meaningless by repetition. Vengeance .
    â€œThe information you’ve given us is going to be a big help,” Harper says, tightening out of their reverie. “This is good. Easy for you because these bad guys are your bad guys. The next thing isn’t going to be easy because we want your good guys. Your good guys are our bad guys.” He pauses, seems about to continue—then changes his mind. Their eyes meet again and Augustus sees how little time there is left. Open your mouth now and you know what’ll come out: Please don’t do this I beg you I’ll tell you anything you want to know please for God’s sake don’t hurt me please please please .
    So he jams his teeth together.
    Â 
    A fter the first frost Maddoch drives over with a builder and spends the day repairing the croft’s roof and chimney stack. The rubble in the fireplace is the chimney stack, according to Maddoch, kicked in by vandals. About half of it is reusable, the rest goes into tough plastic bags hefted into the back of the builder’s van.
    â€œYou didn’t have to do this,” Augustus says. Since waking he’s been