The Credulity Nexus (15 page)

His companion
was already unstrapped and heading for the door. He looked back at
Rik briefly and smiled. “You'll see.”

The next
person to walk into the room was Rivers Valdinger, looking fresh
and perky and very pleased with herself. Rik watched her carefully,
wishing his arms weren't strapped down.

“
What did you do with the woman I was
with?” he asked.

“
What do you care? She was obviously CIA,
or whatever.” She came up close to him and bent down towards him,
her face close, her head tilted and her black, featureless eyes
looking into his. “Or did you have the hots for the little
G-girl?”

Rik fought
down his anger. “Just tell me what you did with her.”

Rivers straightened up and walked away.
“I'd have thought you'd be more interested in what's about to
happen to
you
,
Rik.”

He glowered at
her. “What, we're on first-name terms now, are we?”

She turned and
smiled. Rik had known a few uploads in his time. Not many, but
enough to understand that their robotic bodies were animated by a
human personality, that their gestures, their body language,
reflected the person that lived within. Rivers must have been a
very young woman, he guessed, and an attractive one, before she
died. This creature of carved obsidian moved with the
self-confident grace of a high-school cheerleader. For an instant
he could see her as she might have been, lissom and athletic, as
careless of her beauty as she was of other people's lives.

She seemed to
be studying him, too. What she made of him, he had no interest in
finding out. He just wanted her to tell him Freymann was OK and get
out of his face. But neither wish stood much chance of being
fulfilled.

She untied him
quickly and took his arm, dragging him to his feet and leading him
in silence out of the ship. They passed through the airlock, which
was standing open, and into the biggest docking bay he had ever
seen outside of a space bridge terminal. He asked again where he
was, and again he got no answer.

She took him
across the dock and into a corridor that wound between offices and
meeting rooms. They entered one, and she laid him on a gurney. She
tied him down once more with chest, leg and arm straps, and fitted
him with a VR helmet and gauntlets.

“
What is all this?” he complained, but
didn't really expect an answer. The spinal clamp at the back of the
helmet pressed against the back of his neck, and his visor turned
opaque.

“
Maybe I'll see you inside,” Rivers
said.

And then he
was in Hell.

Fariba
Freymann's idea of Hell was sitting hour after hour in an interview
room in the FBI Field Office Headquarters, on Wilshire Boulevard.
Her jaw ached from the dental work she'd just undergone, to repair
the damage Rivers Valdinger's rock-hard fist had done. Her section
head was en route from the UK to co-ordinate her release, which
made her cringe with embarrassment every time she remembered
it.

It was a plain
room, and Freymann knew every scratch on every wall-panel, every
dent in the plastic-laminated table to which her hands were cuffed,
and the exact on-off-on-off frequency of the little red light on
the video camera that stared at her with steady gaze.

“
You didn't have to cuff me, you bastard,”
she shouted at the camera, directing her words at the agent she
knew would be watching. “You're a small-minded, spiteful, prissy
little man.” She had plenty of anger left, but even she was getting
bored with insulting her gaoler. Still, he deserved one last
effort. “Haven't you ever heard of extending professional courtesy,
you stunted, bald-headed...” She amused herself for a while
plumbing the depths of her New York linguistic heritage for
suitable epithets.

It had been
three days since they found her, unconscious and surrounded by
guns, in the back of a stolen car with false registration, parked
illegally at an airport terminal. For the Special Agent in charge,
it seemed like Christmas had come early. Until that point, he'd
been facing some very awkward questions about the attack at
Cedars-Sinai: specifically, how the perpetrator seemed to have
driven away from the scene while his troops were busy tripping over
their own feet. Now he had a live one for questioning.

Special Agent
Sly Kowalski had champed at the bit while they fixed up Freymann's
jaw – including an injection of stem cells to regrow three teeth
that had gone missing – and then he had pounced: only to find his
suspect was a secret service agent of a friendly government.
Admittedly, she was working undercover on American soil, without
the sanction of the U.S. Government, but that was pretty small
potatoes in the scheme of things. He had been forbidden to question
her and forbidden to treat her as a terrorist suspect. Negotiations
were underway well above his pay-scale. But no-one had said
anything about not cuffing her to a table while he waited.

Two guys from
the CIA had turned up and spent four hours with her, keeping
Kowalski out of the room and turning off all his recording gear.
Freymann had enjoyed the fury on the man's face as the CIA guys
almost pushed him out of the room. They debriefed her
professionally and thoroughly. According to her standing orders for
situations of this type, she co-operated fully.

Kowalski had
also denied her any information whatsoever about what had happened
to Rik, or even Blake and Brie Bonomi, no matter how many times she
demanded to know.

Freymann could
only hope she'd have the chance to knee the little jerk in the
groin before they let her go.

“
Fariba, how nice to see you looking so
well.” Her boss stepped into the room as if he were inspecting an
abattoir. The look of distaste on his face only intensified as his
gaze met hers. “Been taking good care of you, have
they?”

Special Agent
Kowalski, her own personal demon, stood behind her boss. From his
sour expression, he disliked the sight of her as much as she
disliked the sight of him. A minion hurried around the table and
unlocked her cuffs.

“
It's good to see you, sir,” she said,
standing and rubbing her wrists pointedly.

“
The paperwork is all complete,” he said.
“You're now under my cognisance, as they say, until we have you
safely in the air and on your way back home. Shall we be
off?”

She knew
better than to say anything about how she had been treated. She
also knew better than to garrotte Kowalski as she passed him. The
MI6 debriefing would start on the plane, she supposed. And as for
Kowalski, just being himself would have to be punishment enough.
All the same, she gave him a bright smile as she left.

The sky hung
low, an oppressive mass of heavy red and black clouds. A plain of
cracked rock ran for miles, and volcanoes towered on the horizon.
The world shimmered in its own heat haze. Sulphurous fumes made Rik
gag, and the scalding air seared his lungs. And his skin. All of
it. Rik found he was stark naked.

The woman
walking towards him through the fire and brimstone wore a red vinyl
catsuit and spiked heels. The outfit seemed to have been
spray-painted onto the most incredibly curvaceous body Rik had ever
seen outside of a comic book. A long, red tail lashed in her wake,
and her perfectly beautiful face was marred only by the two small
horns growing from her forehead.

She looked Rik
up and down as she approached, smiling to herself. “Very nice,” she
said, her voice a low, sensual purr. “But not quite perfect.” She
came up close and stroked his chest with gloved fingers. He felt
himself grow enormously, embarrassingly aroused, and gasped at the
sudden flood of sensation. The woman's smile broadened. She glanced
down at his crotch.

“
Now
you're perfect,” she said.

“
What the hell is this?” He growled. He put
his hands over his crotch in a vain attempt to preserve some
dignity, but the feel of his own erection against his palms and
fingers had the exact opposite effect. He removed them quickly and
stood up straight, hoping a furious glare would do to cover his
discomposure.

“
Don't be shy, big boy. You've got nothing
to be ashamed of.” She walked behind him to complete her
survey.

“
Look, you just dragged me millions of
kilometres across space, and for what? Sex games?”

She walked
around in front of him, her tail twining briefly around his rigid
member as she passed. He almost cried out in surprise and, despite
himself, pleasure.

“
Hmmm,” she murmured. “Games might be fun.
What did you have in mind?”

He was finding
it hard not to let his mind wander onto such matters. “OK. I get
it. You're the Devil and you're here to tempt me. Nice job. Now,
can we cut all this crap and get to the point of why I'm here?”

The woman just
kept prowling around him, smiling to herself, touching him,
sniffing his sweat. “When I'm ready. Now don't spoil my fun by
being petulant. Cutting pieces out of you would be almost as much
fun for me as what I have planned, but I don't think you'd like it
half so much.”

He'd never
thought about how to fend off someone who looked like Wonder
Woman's hotter, evil sister, and who had a remote control for his
hormones. The longer he watched her slinking about in that catsuit,
the more he wondered if he really wanted to fend her off at all. It
made Rik feel helpless and vulnerable; two feelings that were
guaranteed to get him mad. But how do you fight your way out of a
virtual reality controlled by a crazy woman?

“
Thank you, Celestina. I'll take it from
here.”

The speaker
was a tall, well-made man in his mid thirties. He wore a
beautifully tailored business suit and spoke with a suave
confidence that immediately put Rik on edge. Despite the heat, the
newcomer seemed perfectly comfortable.

Celestina
looked at the man as if she'd like to eat him – in a good way or a
bad way, Rik couldn't quite tell. There was obviously some friction
between them, a power struggle of some sort, but to Rik's surprise,
the guy in the suit seemed to have the upper hand.

“
I was just getting acquainted with your
little human, darling,” Celestina drawled. “Why don't you let me
play with him for a while longer? He'll be ever so much more
biddable afterwards, I promise you.”

The
businessman looked at Rik's erection and raised an eyebrow. “What's
this place supposed to be?” he asked. He clearly thought such games
were beneath contempt.

Celestina
seemed irked. She held up her long-fingered hands and clapped once
in a melodramatic gesture. Everything changed in an instant. They
were in a large, oak-panelled office with a huge mahogany desk and
plush carpets. Framed certificates and group photos of men in suits
lined the walls. A wide picture window looked out onto a Manhattan
skyline from the late twentieth century. Celestina perched on the
edge of the desk wearing a calf-length pencil skirt and a fitted
white blouse. Her hair was tied up in a bun and she carried a
dictation pad and pen. Rik found himself kneeling on the carpet at
her feet, wearing only an unbuttoned white shirt and jockey shorts.
Celestina's stockinged foot, clad in a high-heeled pump, was in his
hand. He dropped it immediately.

“
There,” she said to the stranger. “Is that
more to your taste?”

The suited man
was completely unruffled. “Thank you for finding him, Celestina. I
knew I could rely on you.”

Again, the
scene changed. Rik was glad he had been kneeling down at that
point, because he felt so disoriented that he would probably have
fallen over, otherwise. He and the businessman were alone in a
large, comfortable drawing room. The chairs were softest calfskin,
and the marble floor was strewn with deep rugs. There was a huge
hearth in which logs too heavy to lift crackled and blazed. A row
of bookshelves along one wall contained a library's worth of old
books. Classical music drifted through the air.

“
That's better,” the man in the suit said.
Rik looked around to check that Celestina was nowhere to be seen
and got to his feet. He was wearing the ship's jumpsuit again, and
his hormone levels had fallen to normal. He breathed a sigh of
relief, feeling himself subsiding.

“
My colleague, whom you just met, has been
working with me to try to retrieve a certain package which recently
came into your possession.” The man spoke in a precise, neutral
voice. He had an educated East Coast accent which must have cost
his parents plenty. Although there was a relaxed sociability to the
man's tone, there was also an underlying hint of prissiness that
suggested an obsessive-compulsive personality. “I'm sorry if some
of her tactics have been a little rough, but more depends on this
than you can possibly imagine.”

Rik regarded
the man steadily for a moment, then said, “Who the fuck are you,
where the fuck am I, and what the fuck is going on?”

The man
blinked, his air of control and assurance briefly disturbed. “I'm
sorry. I assumed...” He took a breath, ready to start again.

“
Tell it from the beginning,” Rik said,
interrupting. “Tell it slow, and make sure you include the part
where my friend gets shot by your thugs.”

“
Your friend? I – I didn't know anybody had
been shot. I left all the details of the operation to
Celestina.”

“
That would be the deranged bitch I just
met in the other fantasy world?
That's
who you left all the details to?”