The Cast Stone by Harold Johnson Page B

house. It was one of those newer models, with the oversize wheels that always made Ben think of Red River carts. He stepped back out of view as Abe crossed the yard to speak to the driver.
    Roland Nataways stood where Ben had intended to go.
    â€œHey, Professor”
    â€œRoland, right?” Ben stepped around him into the shade.
    â€œYeah, Roland, from your seminar class in ’09.”
    â€œRight. So how are you, Roland?”
    â€œGood, good,” he shuffled until his back touched the wall.
    â€œSo what’ve you been doing recently?”
    â€œNot much now, used to do a lot of work for NGOs, or Near Government Organizations as I liked to call them. First Nation stuff, even worked with the Metis for awhile, development work.”
    â€œNot anymore?” Ben liked this young man. He wasn’t that young, in his thirties probably. It was hard to tell. The face was of a person who had stood too close to suffering and the pain etched itself into lines.
    â€œNot anymore. Not much you can do when they erase your bank accounts. The last place was an organization trying to feed city kids. I guess we weren’t Christian enough or something. The virus not only took out the organization’s accounts but nearly everybody who worked there. Some of us tried to keep going. I was hunting in the river valleys and bringing in deer meat. But after a while I just couldn’t afford it. Not just the gas, ammunition was getting crazy even then. That’s what I’m talking about next.” “The price of ammunition?”
    â€œNo, I did two-and-a-half years in Dakota Max for a break, enter and theft. I broke into a gun shop trying to get ammunition. Tell you something, Prof. It was some of your ideas about supremacy that got me through. I forced myself to remember that the reason they were treating me as lesser was because they needed to, that someone else was treating them as lesser. I wanted to thank you for that.”
    What to say? Ben had no response. He nodded. Stood in front of someone he did not remember speaking to about an abstract subject and found his words returned to him in concrete, as solid as the prison walls of Dakota Max.
    When it was Roland’s turn to speak, he did not begin with his experiences in the ten-thousand inmate privately run prison. Instead he started by asking if anyone had heard the news this morning. People stirred, but no one answered.
    â€œWell, Wright announced that Canada is a ticking bomb.” He paused, “Rhetoric? Not at all. The words were chosen and deliberate. Ticking bomb is a justification for torture. Of course it’s never called torture. It’s called aggressive interview. In American law, if you know that there is a ticking bomb, and you know that your prisoner knows when and where the bomb will explode, you can legally torture him in order to save lives. That is the first criteria in Homeland Security directive sixty-six. The second criteria is that only enough pain is inflicted that the prisoner responds. Other criteria in the directive include that the interviewer is supervised and decisions about the amount of pain, type of interview, and duration are decided separately. The directive also requires that a trained doctor be present. Note, that the directive does not stipulate the training, nor that the doctor be licensed. Most medical associations refuse to license anyone specializing in pain administration. You would think that any real doctor, someone dedicated to the alleviation of suffering, would refuse to participate, especially since they would have to give up their licence. But, with the amount these guys are getting paid there is no shortage. Nearly double your wage, and work less than half the amount of time. It’s a gold mine.
    So we have in one room the prisoner, the supervisor, the interviewers, and a medic and a book of guidelines. This is all designed to make torture as humane as possible. Only the amount of