“Couldn’t something have been done about that scar? You look scary enough. And I suppose none of the side effects have manifested, or has there not been time for it to show one way or the other? And how could you have got it done in two days? I thought the quickest time to do it we’d found so far was two weeks. What is it? New nanites? New drugs? And how was it done? Why? Wasn’t the last one just fine? You looked fine last month.”
I felt like I had been caught in some sort of weird parallel universe where I couldn’t understand what people said. Maybe it was true that I’d forgotten how conversations happened. Most of what Javier had said seemed like gibberish with no referent.
I looked around the office, which looked exactly like it had when Javier’s father used it. I’d been there once or twice, with my father, for some sort of official, documented meeting.
Like my father, Javier’s father liked heavy dark furniture, though I suspected his was antique furniture. I had a vague memory of his saying that his desk had belonged to the king of Spain. He hadn’t said which, as though there had been only one. On a corner of that huge, dark desk, was a vast globe done in stone inlays. It didn’t show the seacities, which meant it was very old.
On the wall was a portrait of a man who looked much like Javier, if Javier took to wearing a pointy beard and Renaissance garb. That man had a toy ship in his hands and his foot resting on a globe that looked uncommonly like that one.
I remembered when I’d been in that office before, I’d thought that a globe made for a damn silly foot rest, and wondered why someone who looked like a Renaissance nobleman couldn’t have afforded something cushier. Now I knew better. Those gems, furnished to me over the fifteen years of my captivity, had done more than keep me sane. They’d taught me history and art and other things that were not really taught anymore, or not in any depth. That globe symbolized dominion over the world.
I turned back to Javier, who had sat back at his desk and was gazing at me with the sort of contemplative expression of a man looking at wild beast, fresh captured. “I am going to need your help, Javier. I’m going to need your help to figure out this thing.”
“Eh?” He said, puzzled. “What thing?”
“How to . . . what to do as Good Man. How it all works. You must know my father gave me no instruction.”
I saw his face change. I saw him open his drawer. Don’t ask me how I knew what he was doing. I did. It made no sense but I did. Before he’d got the drawer open, I had his wrist in my hand, then his other wrist, as he tried to reach for what looked like a paperweight on the desk, and which was in fact either a paperweight or perhaps a call button for security.
And then I got the shock of my life. That up close, looking at Javier’s face, I’d swear that those weren’t his eyes. The color in them was the same. The shape was the same. I can’t explain what I mean, but they weren’t Javier’s eyes, all the same. Whatever was looking at me through them wasn’t Javier.
And whatever was looking at me through them was also making a determined effort to fight me, even with both his hands held in mine. He lifted his knee, and I sidestepped, and he kicked out at air, and he tried to bite my nose off.
“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you. It’s you, isn’t it? What are you? Impossible to kill? We told Dante to finish you off. We told him.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t have time to argue it. I was in his office. That meant, by definition, we were surrounded by his men. And there was naked hatred in his eyes, and I didn’t know who or what he was, but he wasn’t my friend Javier. There was neither refuge nor protection here. There was neither advice nor affection, not even the consolation of talking to someone else who had been friends with Ben. What there was instead was danger.
The moment I let go of
I felt like I had been caught in some sort of weird parallel universe where I couldn’t understand what people said. Maybe it was true that I’d forgotten how conversations happened. Most of what Javier had said seemed like gibberish with no referent.
I looked around the office, which looked exactly like it had when Javier’s father used it. I’d been there once or twice, with my father, for some sort of official, documented meeting.
Like my father, Javier’s father liked heavy dark furniture, though I suspected his was antique furniture. I had a vague memory of his saying that his desk had belonged to the king of Spain. He hadn’t said which, as though there had been only one. On a corner of that huge, dark desk, was a vast globe done in stone inlays. It didn’t show the seacities, which meant it was very old.
On the wall was a portrait of a man who looked much like Javier, if Javier took to wearing a pointy beard and Renaissance garb. That man had a toy ship in his hands and his foot resting on a globe that looked uncommonly like that one.
I remembered when I’d been in that office before, I’d thought that a globe made for a damn silly foot rest, and wondered why someone who looked like a Renaissance nobleman couldn’t have afforded something cushier. Now I knew better. Those gems, furnished to me over the fifteen years of my captivity, had done more than keep me sane. They’d taught me history and art and other things that were not really taught anymore, or not in any depth. That globe symbolized dominion over the world.
I turned back to Javier, who had sat back at his desk and was gazing at me with the sort of contemplative expression of a man looking at wild beast, fresh captured. “I am going to need your help, Javier. I’m going to need your help to figure out this thing.”
“Eh?” He said, puzzled. “What thing?”
“How to . . . what to do as Good Man. How it all works. You must know my father gave me no instruction.”
I saw his face change. I saw him open his drawer. Don’t ask me how I knew what he was doing. I did. It made no sense but I did. Before he’d got the drawer open, I had his wrist in my hand, then his other wrist, as he tried to reach for what looked like a paperweight on the desk, and which was in fact either a paperweight or perhaps a call button for security.
And then I got the shock of my life. That up close, looking at Javier’s face, I’d swear that those weren’t his eyes. The color in them was the same. The shape was the same. I can’t explain what I mean, but they weren’t Javier’s eyes, all the same. Whatever was looking at me through them wasn’t Javier.
And whatever was looking at me through them was also making a determined effort to fight me, even with both his hands held in mine. He lifted his knee, and I sidestepped, and he kicked out at air, and he tried to bite my nose off.
“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you. It’s you, isn’t it? What are you? Impossible to kill? We told Dante to finish you off. We told him.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t have time to argue it. I was in his office. That meant, by definition, we were surrounded by his men. And there was naked hatred in his eyes, and I didn’t know who or what he was, but he wasn’t my friend Javier. There was neither refuge nor protection here. There was neither advice nor affection, not even the consolation of talking to someone else who had been friends with Ben. What there was instead was danger.
The moment I let go of
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