Free HARM by Brian W. Aldiss

“I’ll die. For sure I’ll die.” He saw above him a grille of iron bars which served to let in a glimmer of light.
    The darkness whirled about him, the sight of light was lost.
    “You’ll not die until you have answered our questions,” said another voice. “Doris was your wife. Where were you married? In some fucking mosque?”
    “In a registry office in Harrow…I shall surely die…”
    “Tell me her name.”
    “I told you more than once. Doris.”
    “Doris
who,
you bastard?”
    “Doris McGinty.” He felt he would crumble from fatigue. They had kept him awake for fifty hours without rest.
    “She was a white woman.”
    “She was Irish.”
    “She was a white woman, you bastard.”
    “Yes.”
    “How did you manage to marry a white woman?”
    “Oh, for God’s sake. I thought this was a free country.”
    “So it was, until you bastards started blowing things up, uttering threats, suicide-bombing.”
    “That was nothing to do with me. I was a lawful law-abiding citizen.”
    “But you were thinking of blowing the place up. You were an ally of this shit from Al-Muhajiroun. You wrote about killing the PM in your sodding book.”
    “That was just a—just a joke, really…A bit unfortunate…”
    The guard struck him across the nape of his neck with a wooden baton. He heard the small bones crunch.
    A deep bespattered darkness fell upon him.

    E SSANITS CAME TO VISIT HIM IN HIS CELL.
    “I find you in a bad way, Fremant,” he said. “I’m permitted to be in these cellars because our leader regards me as a hero. Because…” Here his voice faltered. “Because I wiped out the Dogovers.”
    Fremant could not raise his voice above a whisper. “He will kill me tomorrow. I know that.”
    “Astaroth’s reign of injustice must end, and with it his hateful creed. You have spirit. I cannot let you die. It’s against my”—he pronounced a word Fremant vaguely understood—“religion.”
    About his neck Essanits wore a length of scarf. This he removed and went over to the iron bars of the grille. Standing on tiptoe, he tied the scarf to one of the bars.
    “When it is dark, I shall return outside the Center. The scarf will tell me which is your cell. I will give you further instructions then. Meanwhile…”
    He brought from his pocket a quantity of salack. “Chew this. Rest yourself. Fear nothing.”
    Essanits left.
    Fremant propped himself against a wall and chewed on the herb. Gradually, some of his strength returned.
    The day waned. A jailer came, bringing a small pitcher of water and a hunk of bread. The bread tasted stale. Fremant washed it down with gulps of water.
    As darkness closed in, Fremant detected—so sensitized was he by now to such things—an additional alteration in the light; he realized that the Shawl was about to pass over Stygia once again.
    When darkness became complete, and a chilly wind blew through his grating, he heard a sound outside. The scarf was removed from the bars. A glowworm of light showed. Then came a dull clumping of a heavy instrument striking the mortar in which the bars were embedded. A pause. The bars were being tested, shaken. More clumping. A bar was being wrenched away. Then another bar. Then another.
    A hand extended into the prison cell, holding a small light in a glass. It was followed by a rope. The light was the signal. It was withdrawn.
    Fremant grasped the rope, tested it to see that it was secure, then seized it firmly and climbed up the wall. He wriggled his way through the toothless gap of his window, to arrive on all fours on the ground outside. Willing hands helped him to his feet. Someone clapped him on his back.
    “Horses nearby,” said Essanits. “Are you all right? Let’s hurry!”
    They guided him downhill, a young unknown man holding tightly to the escaped prisoner’s arm to prevent him falling. It was the darkest of nights. No one was about. Not a glimmer of light showed in any window. There was no doubt that the passing of the Shawl