Free Babylon by Richard Calder

I said. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
    Above the engine, cylindrical helixes of copper wire crackled and sparked; the dome’s interior swam with colours.

    ‘No harm will come to you,’ said the Duenna, whose head had reappeared at the grille. ‘You must simply try to relax. Now, once again—and concentrate, dear, concentrate—when did you first start developing a certain, let us say, susceptibility to the Black Order’s propaganda?’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I mumbled. I tried to say more but my tongue had become inert and I lapsed into incoherence. The swirling colours drew me into their labyrinth. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead and dripped from the tip of my nose. The air seemed to have become incandescent. I gritted my teeth. Images of those men who threatened to incriminate me danced and flickered against the backdrop of steel and then as suddenly disappeared. ‘I don’t know any Minotaurs!’ I blurted out.
    The mechanic glanced at the engine’s control panel: an array of dials, meters, levers, and gauges. Then he inspected the oneiroscope: an oblong panel of steel that hung from the wall like a looking-glass above a roaring fireplace. ‘It’s the truth,’ he said.
    The Duenna sighed. ‘The truth’ was obviously proving to be a considerable irritant. ‘It does not answer my question,’ she said. I heard her fingers drum against the latticework of the grille. ‘Now, listen to me, Madeleine Fell.’ I ignored her, trying to think of the things I had done during the last weekend, and of the long, glorious hours spent with Cliticia: Victoria Park, the street party in Brick Lane, and a whole Sunday afternoon of promenading up and down the High Street. But however much I tried to keep those happy thoughts uppermost, the weekend had, of course, like all weekends, inevitably resolved into Monday morning. As usual, I had walked to school, lined up to see the nit nurse, attended roll call, and listened to Miss Nelson read from scripture. Then the black wagon had arrived. Summoned once more to the headmistress’s study, I had found myself alone in the company of the Duenna and her assistant. Within minutes, I had been introduced to the steel dome: a strange, anonymous place where dream had become indistinguishable from reality.
    ‘The Minotaurs are incendiaries,’ continued the Duenna. ‘Their so-called Black Order is dedicated to death. It is necromantic.’ The urge to close my eyes was almost irresistible. But I forced myself to keep them open, determined to show that I was prepared to bear witness to the present miscarriage of justice. ‘For years they confined their outrages to Babylon. Their cowardice paid off. Knowing that no man would pursue them off-world, they evaded arrest and punishment. But now they grow brazen. They bring their horrors to Earth Prime, to the heart of Empire itself.’ She pressed her face to the grille, so that her dark, still beautiful features seemed to merge into its grid of lozenges.
    ‘In 1883 two underground railways were dynamited. There was even an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the offices of The Times ! Then in 1884 a portion of Victoria Station was blown up and Scotland Yard was attacked... ’ Her face drew away and I saw that the grille had left its imprint on her flesh. Despite my predicament, I almost felt like laughing. ‘And now we have one of these Minotaurs prowling the East End, committing unspeakable murders!’ She pressed her hands together, made a steeple of the index fingers, and held it up to her lips. ‘We simply cannot afford to recruit young women whose sensibilities have become corrupted by the Black Order’s politico-mystical agenda. To do so,’ she concluded, growing more prim, ‘would be to collaborate in their suicide, and, what is more, betray the other volunteers entrusted to our charge.’
    ‘I haven’t been corrupted,’ I said, queasily. ‘I haven’t, I haven't.’ Not by any