The dosage, he had said. He had been holding a syringe as I woke up, been surprised that I was not more frightened— Of course. What a wonderful idea, to inject his patients with some kind of psychotropic drug to increase their sense of helpless terror. I wished I knew how to do that. Why hadn’t I gotten medical training? But, of course, it was a little late to worry about that. And in any case, it sounded very much like the dosage was adjusted just right for Doakes.

Well, Albert, said the Doctor to the sergeant, in a very pleasant and conversational voice, slurping his coffee, what’s your guess?

Nahana! Nah!

I don’t think that’s right, said the Doctor. Although perhaps if you had a tongue, it might have been. Well, in any case, he said, and he bent to the edge of the table and made a small mark on a piece of paper, almost like he was crossing something out. It is rather a long word, he said. Nine letters. Still, you have to take the good with the bad, don’t you? And he put down his pencil and picked up a saw, and as Doakes bucked wildly against his bonds the Doctor sawed off Doakes’s left foot, just above the ankle. He did it very quickly and neatly, placing the severed foot beside Doakes’s head as he reached over to his array of instruments and picked up what looked a large soldering iron. He applied this to the new wound and a wet hiss of steam billowed up as he cauterized the stump for minimal blood flow. There now, he said. Doakes made a strangled noise and went limp as the smell of seared flesh drifted through the room. With any luck at all he would be unconscious for a while.

And I, happily, was a little more conscious all the time. As the chemicals from the Doctor’s dart gun seeped out of my brain, a sort of muddy light began to trickle in.

Ah, memory. Isn’t it a lovely thing? Even when we are in the middle of the worst of times, we have our memories to cheer us. I, for example, lay there helpless, able only to watch as dreadful things happened to Sergeant Doakes, knowing that soon it would be my turn. But even so, I had my memories.

And what I remembered now was something Chutsky had said when I rescued him. When he got me up there, he had said, he said, ‘Seven,’ and ‘What’s your guess?’ At the time I had thought it a rather strange thing to say, and wondered if Chutsky had imagined it as a side effect of the drugs.

But I had just heard the Doctor say the same things to Doakes: What’s your guess? followed by, Nine letters. And then he had made a mark on the piece of paper taped to the table.