cause such pain!
The light cleared and he could see the other two looking down at him. The
guard was laughing at his contortions. One question at any rate was
answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of
pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing
in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no
heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor,
clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm.



II

He was lying on something that felt like a camp bed, except that it
was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in some way so that he
could not move. Light that seemed stronger than usual was falling on his
face. O'Brien was standing at his side, looking down at him intently. At
the other side of him stood a man in a white coat, holding a hypodermic
syringe.
Even after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings only
gradually. He had the impression of swimming up into this room from some
quite different world, a sort of underwater world far beneath it. How long
he had been down there he did not know. Since the moment when they arrested
him