The Eternal Prison (42 page)

 

I was buying time. For what, I didn’t know, but I figured if the only thing selling was time, I’d better buy as much of it as I could. “You Undersecretaries are doing such a great job, I think I need about six hundred thousand yen to buy a pair of shoes these days, and the way you fuckwads are shelling the countryside it looks like things are getting worse. We’re going to start hitting buffer overflows on our credit dongles.”

 

Ruberto’s plump lips pursed, and then he nodded. “Perhaps we can work out a payment—do you have a number in mind?”

 

Don’t deal with Ruberto, Cates,
Salgado whispered.
You can’t trust him. He’s setting himself up as king of a new System ever since he claimed control of the new army.

 

I blinked, trying to keep my face blank. “I thought you were making the offers, Cal,” I said, tossing the bottle neck over my shoulder. “But we can come back to that. Obviously, I want my file vacated. I don’t want to just be released, I want to be
erased.
I don’t want to be anyone’s Person of Fucking Interest anymore, okay?”

 

“How about we just chuck you out the hatch and be done with it?” Neely growled.

 

Ruberto held up a hand languidly without looking at his flunky, and Neely took a deep breath, clamping his jaw shut tightly.

 

“All right, Cates. I cannot speak for Director Marin, of course, but I will excise you from civilian and military data banks. Anything else?”

 

I smiled at him. It was almost fun to test how desperate they were, how much they’d offer me. “I have a question I’ve been trying to get answered for a while now. I’m looking for some —”

 

“Fuck this. He’s playing with us,” Neely suddenly growled. I could feel the hover’s momentum changing, my stomach flipping again: we were landing.

 

“Playing with us,” Ruberto echoed, sighing deeply. “Perhaps.” He stared at me for a long time, both of us just breathing—him slow and steady, me in wincing little yips and snorts—and I thought this motherfucker was nothing like Dick Marin. At least, the pureed, stuffed-in-a-can Marin I’d always known. But I guessed having your brain sucked out through a dozen needles and slammed into a storage brick might have some side effects.

 

This is how you take over the world,
Salgado said.
We thought Marin was doing it—seize the SSF, start making avatars, and then bring the hammer down. But that was messy. A war broke out, and we were not without resources. But now imagine you’re fighting both sides of the war! Every battle, every defeat and victory planned and orchestrated. And in the end it won’t matter who wins, because you’re leading both sides! But Ruberto could never seize complete control. They need to get rid of the other Undersecretaries.

 

What do you know?
I demanded.

 

For a second there was no response.
I know that Marin did not suspend
all
of his programmed overrides. I know that there are bare-metal panic codes built into his design. I do not know the overrides myself. But I know the identity of the one person who
does.

 

Marin suddenly spoke up.
Bullshit. You know what, Avery? I always hated that fucking bitch. Just an endless headache, that woman.

 

Dolores had sunk deep again. I clung to my one blessing in the last half hour: at least Dennis Squalor, also embedded in my head somehow, had been quiet as a saint.

 

Ruberto suddenly leaned forward. “All right, Mr. Cates. We can defer further negotiation until later. We have settled some terms, and you have my pledge that we will settle more. But first, perhaps, you could offer up something to prove you have the information we require?”

 

I glanced at Neely, who was staring at me in a fixated way I recalled well from my previous encounters with psionics. He already knew what I’d been trading in: bullshit.

 

I gave him my best grin, twisting my face into the familiar shape with some effort. “How about we see if I can’t get my hands on your neck and snap your windpipe before your monkey there can stop me?”

 

For a moment, we were all suspended and silent. I expected violence, or a sudden icy fist in my brain, taking control and pulling on my tendons like puppet strings. Neither happened, and then the hover settled onto the ground, the displacers going silent and the woozy feeling of resisting gravity and momentum evaporating.

 

“I am sorry we could not come to an accommodation, Mr.

 

Cates,” Ruberto said, standing up and shooting his cuffs. He smelled pleasant, and his skin had a nice tan pigment, like good leather. “Your associates will have to debark as well. Sekander, see to everything.”

 

“Yup,” Neely said tersely. He jerked a thumb toward the opening hatch. “Let’s go, smart-ass.”

 

I struggled to my feet. “Smart-ass? That’s the best you can do?”

 

“Be careful, or I might take you for a ride,” he growled, following me toward the exit. “And if your mind pops like a balloon, I might just say you fell, broke your neck, really a shame, the world’s a sadder place.”

 

I pushed my shoulders through the hatch door and blinked down at the trio of smartly dressed men waiting on the hot, sandy dirt. I recognized two of them. The one on the left was Horatio Gall, looking none the worse for having been murdered in Venice. The one in the center had a familiar jagged scar on his round face and smiled up at me with his left arm still hanging limply at his side.

 

“Hope you enjoyed the ride,” Howard Bendix said, his smile tugging his puckered face into a terrible expression that had nothing to do with humor. “It may be the last air you get for a while. Follow us. And don’t forget
I
don’t have to be careful of your precious brain.”

 

As if to prove it, an invisible fist pushed me hard from behind, sending me onto my hands and knees in the hot dirt, my palms scraped raw. My eyes watered from the dust as I raised my head and looked past the telekinetic. The abandoned-looking entry to Chengara rose up behind him, like I’d never left in the first place.

 

 

 

 

XXXVII

AND THOSE WERE MY
ADVANTAGES

 

 

 

 

At the door to the cell I was suddenly lifted up off my feet and thrown against the far wall, hard enough to set my head ringing again. I fell awkwardly onto the chair I’d previously been tied to, my wrist and side bursting into fresh pain, rolling off onto the floor.

 

“I take it back, Mr. Cates,” Bendix said from the hall. “You’re not lucky at all, are you?”

 

I found myself laughing, spluttering against the gritty concrete floor. “Always nice to see a familiar face, Mr. Bendix,” I breathed into the floor. I wasn’t sure he could hear me, and a moment later the door was shut.

 

After a moment, I pushed myself back onto my ass, stretching out my bad leg to ease it a little. I sat there in the dark, waiting for my breathing to slow down, my fists to unclench. I didn’t try to think. After another moment, I closed my eyes and took as deep a breath as I could manage. I cleared my mind, imagining a field of grass at night in a high wind, no other sound but the rustle of the blades. I struggled to create a complete scene: The smell of the air, the push of the wind, the sense of nothingness above me, and something unseen and huge crashing endlessly through the trees toward me. I hadn’t been able to manage the vision for a long time, peace escaping me even during those long months in the prison aboveground, with nothing but the boiled sky and the baked ground and hours and hours of time spent waiting for something to happen.

 

I found my way to it now, pushing everything out behind an imaginary glass wall, clearing the core out and leaving me encased in silence.

 

I sat there for a long time, my aching leg forgotten, not sure what I was going to accomplish with this peaceful state. But I clung to it. I was afraid if I let it slip away, I’d never get it back again.

 

Avery.

 

Marin’s… voice, for want of a better word. I considered pushing him away, out past the borders of my peaceful little node, but decided to let him talk.

 

Avery, maybe it’s time you and I came to an understanding.

 

Silently, I nodded. Whoever was watching me on whatever closed-circuit Vid screens they had set up in the place probably thought I’d finally gone crazy. “Sure thing, Dick,” I said aloud, smiling. “Are you real? Are you really stuffed in there, somehow?”

 

I’m real. Out of date, a little—my Prime has accrued several years’ worth of experiences since I was separated, of course. But I am a complete and functioning imprint. I don’t know how this works, either.

 

I nodded again. “Maybe you were shoved in to torture me.”

 

Sure. I could start singing, maybe, or reciting numbers.

 

“Or just commenting on every fucking thing I do until I want to stick an ice pick into my ear to shut you up.”

 

Ah, hadn’t thought of that, Avery! You are truly an entertaining individual sometimes. I am almost glad I’ve kept you alive all these years.

 

“Kept me alive? Mr. Director, with all due respect, I had something to do with it, too.”

 

No, Avery. If I’d decided you’d lived past your usefulness, you would have been dead a long, long time ago.

 

He wasn’t lying, I could tell. Somehow I knew that he wasn’t lying—maybe he was
wrong,
but he believed it. “Okay. You haven’t pulled my card, and I am eternally grateful, Mistah Directah, suh,” I said amiably. “What understanding are you talking about?”

 

Somehow you’ve found yourself in a position where I can actually
use
you, Avery. You can do a job for me. I haven’t been networked with my Prime for some time, of course, but I am confident this decision would meet with approval.
I could feel him grinning. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but I knew he was smiling.
So tell me, Avery, are you available for some freelance work?

 

“Fucking hell,” I murmured. “Are you kidding me?”

 

I am perfectly serious, Avery.

 

I struggled to maintain my sense of peace. I was negotiating a job with a ghost that lived in my head. I was in a prison Dick Marin fucking
owned,
and I was negotiating with his ghost for a job. The glass wall between me and chaos shimmered and vibrated.

 

“What could you possibly offer me? You’re not connected, as you just admitted. You can’t make any offers on behalf of… of yourself.”

 

True. But I can guide you out of this prison. I had this place
built,
Avery. I can tell you exactly how to escape. That is my offer.

 

My eyes popped open, and the imaginary sphere of calm burst into tiny fragments.

 

I can make no guarantees to you, because I cannot issue orders to staff and you may be apprehended in the attempt and killed, as standing orders require. Pass codes may have been changed—well, I certainly hope they have been changed!—and any number of factors are outside my sphere of influence, which is, I might admit, confined to
you.
So I offer nothing guaranteed. I merely offer the information you
might
use to obtain your freedom.

 

I stared at a random spot on the dim wall across from me.

 

Take your time, of course. There’s no need to rush. I am sure my counterparts are not contemplating more invasive forms of torture, or your summary execution.

 

I licked my lips painfully, wondering if I could trust him. It. Whatever—the voice in my head. How did I know this wasn’t a setup?

 

At least you’re not wondering if you’re crazy anymore. That’s progress. Do you really have any choice, Avery? If I am lying then, yes, you will either be killed or perhaps tricked into revealing something. Although I don’t think you actually know anything to reveal. But let that drift. If you sit here and do nothing, you will almost certainly be tortured again or killed or both—as we both know too well simply dying is no longer a guarantee of release from the miseries of existence, yes? For the moment they hesitate to try digitizing you again, for fear of destroying the only extant copy of Salgado we know to exist. But if you die and your brain begins decaying, there would be nothing to lose, and they might succeed. Simple logic points you toward accepting my offer. At least it is a chance. If you are missing some diabolical wrinkle that will serve to betray you, well, at least you go down swinging, eh?

 

I half nodded. “Grisha and Marko,” I said slowly, feeling my way through it. “They come out, too.”

 

Complications, Avery. I would have thought an old hand like yourself would be a little more sensibly ruthless. But they may be useful, I admit—and how you execute this adventure is entirely up to you, of course. No one is paying attention, but we all have our vanities. Yours is that you are a fundamentally good person, yes? Poor old Avery. As you wish: your odds go down, but I can advise you on how to retrieve your… friends?… and escape with them, yes.