The Prisoner (1979) Read online

  ‘Well, I never. That’s almost as bad as—’

  KNIFING ON OMNIBUS

  KILLER OF FOUR CAPTURED THROUGH ACCIDENT

  There was a high-pitched scream.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  A young man glared indignantly at his companion, and as the bus came to a stop, he slapped the offender, leaped to his feet and stormed down the stairs.

  The stench of sweat, wine and urine was unbearable. In the pastoral reality of the Village he had forgotten air could be so foul. The indulgent softness of the voices was like the sound of grease sputtering or the wetness of poured garbage. Their faces were coarse, hardened, impoverished, smouldering with resentment. He got up, went to the back exit and down around it to the street. A newspaper stand displayed its headline: OXFORD RIOT—65 ARRESTED.

  A sign above the door read: FISH & CHIPS. He went in.

  ‘What’ll it be, love?’

  ‘Fish and chips.’

  ‘Aught to drink?’

  ‘Ginger beer.’

  She slid open the door of the fryer, reached in with a scoop. Two fat golden fish came out. She lay them on a paper and brought out the chips. Then she folded the paper into a neat parcel.

  ‘Vinegar and salt?’

  ‘Please.’

  She got a bottle from the cooler. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’

  He paid it and turned around.

  A camera was mounted over the door, swivelling slowly from right to left. TELE-GUARD SECURITY CAMERA, the identification plate said. Monitored twenty-four hours a day!

  He stepped out on to the street.

  All motion froze. Reality ground to a halt. Everything was still, even (he was certain) the motion of particle and electron.

  Some terrible dislocation wrenched through marrow and bone.

  Alone on the suddenly silent earth, he was as frozen as they.

  This had been reality: deep in the fibre of his being, in the bedrock of his mind, he had believed this reality. Each blade of grass, each breath of air, each glimmer of light had seduced and compelled him. He had given himself up to the illusion.

  And reality had broken.

  Then, from far away, like the distant wail of the wind, a force blew up, stirring the dry grey dust of reality, and rising along his hackles in a frigid, blistering gale.

  It lashed up about him and the fabric of reality quickened, grew thicker, took on life. The figures began to change. First their expressions (little flickerings of eye and mouth) and then their bodies (hair, complexion, length of limb, torso, stance and personality) began to change. They became farmers, businessmen, politicians, and peasants in a flickering blaze of change.

  He saw every evocation of each visible personality throughout every incarnation down all history, all space, all time.

  Light, sound, vibration, solidity and surface flared up in a great tumultuous cry. And the electric circuit of his nerves fused beneath too great an awareness as perception multiplied beyond limit and the universe closed in against him in a total, inchoate mingling of interior and exterior. All tissues, membranes, surfaces, interfaces and barriers vanished in a single gestalt instant. And transfixed by the experience of reality, he came finally to the centre of existence.

  His mouth opened in a frozen, silent scream.

  There was a moment which he became everything, and then—

  Godhood.

  His consciousness fled from the moment unable to accept, trembled and withdrew. It blanked out pain, blanked out cause, blanked out event, withdrew cell by cell, nerve by nerve through his every day in the Village to the time before that, to the source of the pain.

  He fell, unopposed, to the day it all began.

  The music pounded out of the speaker and the singer’s voice set up an eerie summons, high and compelling. The shadows of overhead trees dappled and swirled off the car as it roared down the street and into the city rising before it.

  His face was grim, set. Eyes, mouth, plane of the face, determined, stubborn and resolute. The singer’s image was conjured in his mind, behind the brightness of the London afternoon.

  The car rolled down a ramp into an underground garage.

  He got out and went up to giant double doors, seized the handles and threw them open.

  He threw the resignation on Sir Charles’s desk.

  Sir Charles looked up. His lips parted: The question was flung from the very depths of the universe itself:

  WHY?

  It smote his consciousness—all time, all structure, all reason ringing with the blow. Present and future mingled in his mind. Like the ghost of reality yet to be, he saw the Village more clearly than the face of the man before him.

  And the memory of copper wire and jellied flesh was a shield within his hand.

  ‘No!’ he cried.

  It was the ultimate affirmation.

  The universe came to an end.

  Veuillez, Number Six, how did you resist?’

  ‘Number Four was too co-operative, feeding me in prison. It was out of character. I ate and caught flu. Why? Obviously so I wouldn’t be with you for the execution. Having found one illusion, I waited for the next. And after it, the next. There was never a time I believed completely in my environment.’

  ‘Merci. At least I know.’ He made a defenceless motion with his hands. ‘What will happen to me now, I cannot say.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be given your old job back.’

  ‘Yes, I rather like blending tobacco.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all—’

  ‘Oh yes. You may go, Number Six.’

  ‘Be seeing you, Number Two.’

  He stepped out in the street and started home.

  Number 237 was talking to a shopkeeper across the street. He turned and waved his hat. ‘Hello, Number Six.’

  ‘How was your fishing?’

  ‘Good. Good. You must come to dinner and see.’

  ‘I will.’

  He went on across the green.

  Number 32 came out of a store. Her skirt blew up about her legs.

  Some days he would play chess with the Admiral.

  And some days he would struggle merely to remain alive.

  Today he had a window to repair.

  And tomorrow…he would wait and see.

  For he had defeated them, as he would always defeat them, learning more each time until he set himself free and left.

  For one man alone, each victory against so great a machine must be sweet.

  He lit a cigar and smiled.

  Life was very good just then. Just then.

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  THE PRISONER

  THE OFFICIAL COMPANION

  TO THE CLASSIC TV SERIES

  by Robert Fairclough

  ISBN: 0-7434-5256-9

  It’s been over 35 years since Patrick McGoohan’s thriller series The Prisoner, a strange blend of espionage, psychodrama and fantasy, first entranced the British public. Every week, viewers watched as the eponymous prisoner, Number 6, imprisoned in a hi-tech Shangri-La-style village, was subjected to bizarre interrogation techniques and sinister scientific experiments. In turn, the Prisoner would try to escape his captors and, although always frustrated in his bids for freedom, he would sometimes be the moral victor by turning the tables on his anonymous persecutors. Tracing the program’s evolution from sixties’ curiosity to worldwide cult, the book examines the volatile social and political background which shaped its development.

  With an episode-by-episode analysis, a wealth of previously unpublished photographs, production designs, props and memorabilia, production details, cast biographies and interviews with the cast and crew, The Prisoner: The Official Companion to the Classic TV Series is the ultimate guide to what is now viewed as one of the seminal television series of its time.

  PACKAGED WITH A DVD CONTAINING

  A CLASSIC PRISONER EPISODE!

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  THE PRISONER

  by Thomas Disch

  ISBN: 0-7
434-4504-X

  He’s a top-level agent, highly skilled and ultra-secret. But he wants out, and they won’t let him quit. He quits anyway.

  Then suddenly comes the dawn when he wakes up in captivity, in a pleasant, old-style, seaside town—one packed solid with electronic surveillance hardware.

  This is The Village. And he is The Prisoner.

  If he was good enough, sharp enough to be a top-flight cloak-and-dagger man, is he good enough to escape the men who’ve chained his life to the wall?

  “Closely based on the extraordinary TV series, far and away the finest thing the medium has done in this genre; while Disch himself is one of the best SF writers.”

  —Observer

  A Publication of ibooks, inc.

  The Prisoner™ and © 1967 and 2001

  Carlton International Media Limited.

  Licensed by Carlton International Media Limited.

  Represented by Bliss House, Inc.,

  West Springfield, MA 01089-4107

  An ibooks, inc. Book

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book

  or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ibooks, inc.

  24 West 25th Street

  New York, NY 10010

  The ibooks World Wide Web Site Address is:

  http://www.ibooks.net

  ISBN 1-59019-446-2

  Cover photograph

  copyright © 2002 by Carlton International

  Cover design by