"'Old saying,' [Irawagbon] went on in her basic Stygian. 'Brave die once, coward many time.'
"[Conan] nodded, familiar with it. Versions of that were present in every language and land he'd ever encountered." (p. 260)
Quiz question: Where does James Bond say this? I thought that it was in conversation with Kissy Suzuki in You Only Live Twice but have not found it there. Maybe Thunderball? I have read it recently but then I have reread the complete Bond canon recently.
Conan is now involved in a side-adventure with this other woman, Irawagbon. We know, in any case, that Valeria can take care of herself. We expect Conan's deflected quest to resume in good time. The narrative proceeds at a steady pace.
9 comments:
"Brave die once, coward many time."
and at some point Flandry quotes it and says "after the 523rd death I got tired of it".
Jim,
That is it. It is Flandry, not Bond. I was thinking of the wrong hero.
Paul.
Though waterboarding actually makes it possible for the subjective experience of death (by drowning) to be repeated over and over. It's not as painful as some forms of torture, but it's psychologically far more effective.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But when it comes to using methods that will induce prisoners to answer questions truthfully I don't think water boarding is very effective. In my article "Sensory Deprivation" I discussed how Flandry used depriving of stimuli for inducing a POW to truthfully answer questions.
Ad astra! Sean
Isn't one difficulty with getting *accurate* information via torture, that the torturer tends to continue until he hears what he *wants* to hear. So torture tends to get false confessions in criminal cases. For military information the torturer needs to beware of wishful thinking.
This is aside from the nastiness of any sort of torture.
Kaor, Jim!
And I agree that torture, the crude inflicting of pain, is an unreliable means of obtaining information.
I don't think that is the case with sensory deprivation, at least not when used with the care shown by Flandry. See my article about that and remarks in the combox by an ex-RAF officer.
Ad astra! Sean
Torture disorganizes the personality, for example telling convincing lies becomes impossible. Some forms of torture are better at that than others; it's not a matter of sheer pain, but of psychological dislocation.
I've heard enough about how memory can be manipulated to be *extremely* suspicious of confessions extracted under police interrogation, much less torture. The interrogator wants confession of guilt & stops only when he gets it. See witch trials.
This is relevant to the chapters I am rereading in ROGUE SWORD.
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