the demand through the vent, and no getting a word back
The stilted amplified voice that came periodically through the small screen or vent above him, demanding to know Where Is The Master Buried
Context
Contact through the tumbler runs one direction only: a stilted amplified voice pushes a demand down through a vent, while everything Orin sends back up through the glass fails to land — the anxiety he fixes on is not the airlessness or the broken foot but "not being able to get the adoring Subject to acknowledge anything he said." The apparatus of the scene is an address system with the return line cut, which is why he can only file the whole thing as a dream.