Twenty-two

A

fter sitting through the second tape of his “confessions,” Silas Arnett found himself looking out upon a pleasant outdoor scene: a wood, like the ones to the south of his house. A rich carpet of leaf litter was delicately dappled by sunlight streaming through the canopy. The gnarled boughs of the trees offered abundant perches to little songbirds whose melodies filled the air. It was a simulation of an ancient woodland, whose design owed more to nostalgia than historical accuracy.

Unfortunately, the pleasantness of the surroundings found no echo within his body. In the VE he was a mere viewpoint, invisible to himself, but that only served to place more emphasis on his sense of touch, which informed him that the conditions of his confinement were now becoming quite unbearable.

The subtle changes of position he was able to make were no longer adequate to counter the aching in his limbs. The chafing of the straps which bound his wrists and ankles was now a burning agony. It did no good to tell himself that by any objective standard these were very minor pains, no worse than those which constituted the everyday condition of millions in the days before IT. He, Silas Arnett, had grown fully accustomed to being able to control pain, and now that he could no longer do it he felt that he might easily die of sheer frustration.

A human figure came through the trees to stand before him. It was dressed in a monk’s habit, and Silas inferred that it was supposed to be male, but it was a modern secular monk, not a member of any religious order that might have been contemporary with an ancient forest. The ornament the monk wore around his neck was not a cross but a starburst: a symbol of the physicists’ Creation rather than the redemptive sacrifice of the Christ whose veneration was now confined to a handful of antiquarians.

The man pushed the hood back from his forehead and let its fold fall upon his shoulders. Silas didn’t recognize the exposed visage; it was a handsome, serene face which bore the modest signs of aging that most monks considered appropriate to their station.

Silas wasn’t fooled by the appearance. He knew that the mind behind the mask was the mind of his tormentor.

His “tormentor” had not, in the end, resorted to any very violent torture, but in his present condition Silas found it impossible to be grateful for that. Even had he been more comfortable, any gratitude he might have felt would have been tempered by the knowledge that even though he had not been cut or burned he had certainly been imprisoned, maligned, mocked, and misrepresented.

“That one looked even worse than the first one,” he said, gritting his teeth against his discomfort and hoping that talk might distract him from his woe. “It really doesn’t add anything. I can’t see why you bothered.”

“I didn’t,” said the monk. “That was someone else’s work. I presume that your friends did it—you noticed, I dare say, that the underlying message was that what you and Conrad Heller did was both necessary and justified. On the surface, it begged to be identified as a mere lie, a vicious but half-baked slander, but that was double bluff. The subtext said: Even if it were true, it wouldn’t be in the least terrible. Even if Conrad Heller did cause the Crash, he did it for the noblest of reasons, and it desperately needed to be done. He was a hero, not an enemy of mankind. When the original Operator one-oh-one indignantly blew her cover, by the way, she objected strenuously to my use of that particular phrase. She thinks that I should have said ‘enemy of humankind.’ She’s of an age to be sensitive about that sort of thing—and I suppose a man of your age can probably sympathize with her.”

Silas wasn’t in the least interested in the authentic Eliminator’s retention of outdated radfem sensibilities. “I suppose the subtext of that habit and starburst you’re wearing,” he said, “is that what you’re doing to me is being done for the noblest of reasons—even though you won’t deign to explain what they are.”

“Nobility doesn’t come into it,” the monk told him. “I simply want Conrad Helier to come out of hiding. You were the bait. To be perfectly honest, I’m a little disappointed in him. Dumping that tape was a distinctly weak-kneed response to my challenge. The tape I left with the burned body was much cleverer—as we would all have had the chance to appreciate if Damon’s troublesome friend hadn’t got to the scene before the police and removed the evidence. I wish I knew whether your friends’ failure to rescue you is a matter of incompetence, laziness, or a sacrifice move. They might actually have abandoned you to whatever fate I care to decide. Perhaps they think that it might inconvenience me more if nobody actually came to rescue you at all.”

“Fuck this,” Silas said vituperatively. “All this may be just a game to you, but I’m suffering. If you’ve done what you set out to do and don’t intend to kill me, isn’t it about time you simply let me go?”

“It’s certainly time that someone came to get you,” the monk admitted. “I’m truly sorry that Conrad Helier hasn’t bothered to do it. Alas, I can’t simply releaseyou. This VE’s fitted to a telephone, and I’m calling from elsewhere. The mechanical devices holding you in position require manual release.”

“Someone was here earlier—actually in the room. You took care to let me know that when I first woke up.”

“Everything had to be set up, and manually operated devices have to be put in place manually. As soon as you were secure, however, my helpers made themselves scarce. You’ve been alone for some time, excepting virtual encounters. You mustn’t worry, though. I may have overestimated Conrad Helier’s resources or willingness to respond, but if he doesn’t come for you soon Interpol or Ahasuerus will. That wouldn’t suit my purposes nearly as well, but I suppose it might have to do.”

“The reason you overestimated Conrad’s resources and his willingness to respond,” Silas snarled, “is that you simply can’t bring yourself to accept that he’s dead and buried.”

“No,” said the monk, “I can’t. I know how he did it, you see—and I’ve proved it by repeating the trick. He’s not too proud to repeat it himself, it seems. Karol Kachellek’s gone missing, supposedly blown up by a bomb planted on the Kiteby persons unknown. The implication, of course, is that whoever took you has also gone after Kachellek—but I didn’t do it. I dare say a dead body will turn up in a day or two, suitably mangled but incontrovertibly identifiable by means of its DNA. By my count, that makes three men who are supposed to be dead but aren’t. Where will it all end? It’s beginning to look as if Helier is determined to call my bluff and sit tight no matter what.”

It seemed to Silas that the only one who was sitting tightwas him. He wriggled his torso, deliberately pushing against the back of the padded chair in the hope of countering the aches generated within his muscles. He dared not move his arms or legs in the same way because that would have made the restraining cords contract and cut into his raw flesh. It helped a little.

“I’d hoped, of course, that Helier might be hiding out on the artificial island,” the monk went on, “but that was overoptimistic. He’s off-world—probably a lot further from Earth than Hywood. Not that that’s a bad thing, from my point of view. If Kachellek joins them the whole core of the team will be up, up, and away. I’d be prepared to settle for that—always provided that if they ever want to play in mysandpit again they’ll accept myrules. Heaven forbid that we should ever succeed in crushing the spirit of heroic independence, when all we actually need to do is send it into space. If Conrad Helier does eventually come to get you, Silas, tell him that’s the deal: he can follow his own schemes in heaven, but not on Earth. Anything he does down here has to be checked out with the powers that be, and if it isn’t authorized it doesn’t happen. He’ll know who the message is from.”