Owen shook Bill’s arm violently. No, he wrote. Another Senseless. Tonight.
The words brought Bill a jolt of alarm. “In our hut?”
Yes, Owen drew, his scent heavy with fear. Change plans?
Bill licked his lips, scenting even his own fear. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does Ade know about this?”
Yes.
Well, that was something, anyway. Ade could at least speak, even if they’d taken away his sense of proprioception.
“Wait until Ade’s back,” said Bill. “Then we’ll talk more.”
Ade returned an hour later, stumbling like a drunkard even with the aid of his crutches. Bill listened to the sound of his carefully measured movements as he made his way across the hut. He’d been a concert pianist before his arrest, but nowadays he’d be lucky to sit on a piano stool without sliding straight off.
“There you are,” said Ade, falling into a chair by the hut’s single table. He leaned back, anchoring himself to the back of the chair by hooking his arms over it, his legs sprawled before him at an awkward angle. “I saw you back there.”
Bill nodded. “You spoke with that new interrogator?”
“She’s been talking to all the Senseless prisoners, it seems.”
“What does she look like?” Bill asked suddenly.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Red hair, pale skin? Hair in a bun?”
Ade laughed with delight. “How the hell do you always know?”
A long time ago - before the plagues, the crop failures, the toxic algal blooms killing the oceans and the concomitant collapse in social order - Bill had read about something called blindsight. In certain circumstances, if their optic nerves weren’t damaged, the blind could see - after a fashion. Even though the visual data wasn’t reaching the conscious part of their brain, they were nonetheless aware of their surroundings on an unconscious level, precisely as if they remained sighted. Somehow, Bill didn’t need to see Hannegan’s face to know what she looked like: on some deep-wired level he just knew.
Bill shrugged. “Owen said there’s someone coming to stay with us?”
“We got the news while you were locked up.”
“We only have three bunks in here. There’s no room”
“Does it matter?” Ade’s scent was heavy with anxiety. “We’re supposed to be escaping from this miserable shithole - how are we going to do that with somebody new in here with us? How do we know we can trust him?”
“I don’t know,” Bill replied. The timing couldn’t have been worse. “Maybe let’s just wait and see who we get first.”
Late that night, Bill woke to the sound of boots crossing the muddy ground outside their hut. The door slammed open and Bill counted three pairs of boots thudding across the uneven floorboards. Two were undoubtedly guards, but the third man’s gait was ponderous, stumbling.
The guards left, leaving the stranger alone with them.
Owen wouldn’t have heard them enter, but the freezing wind that came through the door was enough to rouse him. Bill heard his feet touch the floorboards.
“Jesus,” Ade swore. “Reilly fucking Burns?”
Bill climbed out of his bunk, his heart beating wildly. “Are you serious? Reilly, is that you?”
The man gave no answer.
“I think he might be deaf,” said Ade.
Bill found his way over to their new hut-mate and grasped him by the forearm. “I can’t hear anything,” said Reilly, his words thick and slurred.
“Over here,” said Bill, guiding him to the table and helping him sit. Ade’s crutches clicked as he came over to join them, half-falling into another chair.
Owen came to stand beside Bill, rapidly pressing letters into his skin. It’s Reilly Burns.
Bill touched Owen’s face and turned towards him. “I know. He’s deaf. Go get your slate—we need to find out what’s happened to him.”
Bill tried to steady his thoughts while Owen hurried back to his bunk. A lot of people had looked up to Burns, until he disappeared during the first wave of arrests.
Owen returned with the small slate board he used to communicate with people from outside their hut. Bill heard the scrawl of chalk as Owen wrote out a question.
“They caught up with me a couple of weeks ago,” Reilly said. His tone was ponderous and careful, presumably because he couldn’t hear his own voice. “I was in a safe house, in Birmingham, helping to organise a strike. Unity troops stormed the place but I was the only one they caught. I refused to give them any names, so they took my hearing away.”
Owen pressed fingers into Bill’s arm. We can take him with us. We can trust Reilly.
“Of course,” said Bill. This was Reilly Burns, after all, famous - or infamous, depending on your politics - for his stirring denunciation of National Unity in Parliament, just days before they seized power. If they could trust anyone, thought Bill, they could surely trust him. And yet he felt a powerful sense of disquiet, although he could not have said why.
Burns had his own questions, of course. He learned Bill’s blindness was a punishment for articles he’d written denouncing National Unity. Ade had refused to disclose the names of fellow musicians who’d similarly spoken out. Owen, by contrast, was a computer technician who’d never learned the reason for his arrest.
“How long have you all been here on this island?” asked Burns.
“Nearly two years,” said Ade. He spoke for Bill’s benefit, chalking the words down for Reilly and Owen to read. “We’re stuck here unless we give them names we don’t even have.”
