The man blinks, seems to recollect himself. “What?”
“Why. Didn’t. You. Fire. We have you on video walking out of the villa and ditching your armor. You could’ve shot out one of the plane’s engines before it got ten feet off the ground.”
“Because she won,” the man says in a hollow voice.
“The audit clearly shows that you had full control by the time you left the villa, yet you did not engage, so how do you—”
“Because she won,” the man says, fully present for the first time. “She could’ve killed me if she’d wanted to.” His accent is languid, the vowels long, some subspecies of American English. “You know what an iron maiden is? That’s what my armor was, once she owned it. But she must’ve found the pictures of my girls, and took pity on me. She told me to remember that, and I intend to. So that’s why I let her go, and that’s why I’m done. I don’t care if I end up digging ditches for a living. I lost, I should’ve died, and I’m going home.”
“Failure is never acceptable, Corporal Boyd.”
“If you don’t like failure, maybe you should give your shooters armor with more security than my kid’s Barbie. She burned it in the time it takes to light a cigarette.”
“Did you make a deal, Corporal Boyd? Did she buy you off? Because we think you made a deal, and we’d be more inclined to show clemency if you admit it.”
Boyd regards him, and beneath his surface apathy there’s a glittering readiness to harm. He says, “Why don’t you come on over here, sweetheart, and whisper that in my ear.”
The physician stops the video, says, “Explain what’s going on here.” This test, like all the tests, seems arbitrary, and has nothing to do with anything, but despite his exasperation he still he can’t bring himself to draw the gun. There’s always irony, though, the preferred weapon of the weak, so he says, “They’re lovers, having a spat. What does this have to do with me?”
“Very good,” says the physician. “Now there’s just one more test, and it counts for all.”
“Wait,” Thales says, unable to keep his helplessness and strain out of his voice. “Please. Just one second. Could you please just explain to me exactly what’s going on.”
“Look,” says the surgeon, pointing to the tablet, where another video is playing.
It’s the old man from the last video, in a tiny room like a monastic cell with white walls and no windows. He’s lighting candles on a table where dozens of candles are already burning.
His woman enters the frame, stands watching.
“I’m lighting candles for my dead,” he says.
“Family?”
“Victims. One hundred and thirty-eight, as of today. I have their names by heart.”
She searches for a response. “You did what you had to do.”
“What I had to do was kill innocent people, or cause them to be killed, in pursuit of selfish ends. I’m a murderer.”
“No you’re not. Shhh.” She kisses the back of his neck.
“But I am a murderer. I must be honest. It’s the only way to stay intact.” He lights another candle. “Or such is my theory. It’s hard not to think they’d all be dead in half a century anyway, but this is a sociopath’s reasoning, or evolution’s. I’m really trying, but morality looks different on long timescales, and I can’t find a way around that fact.”
“It’ll be worth it,” she says. “You’ll do so much good. Like you said, the world needs a steward, and no one else is positioned to take the job.”
“One day I’ll have islands,” he says, “and on the islands, villas, where I’ll put my enemies, so they can read and garden, raise children, keep mistresses. My exiled adversaries’ memoirs will become an enduring literary genre. For now, I light candles, though it’s already an empty gesture—I no longer much care what I did to them, but I remain scrupulous about going through the motions. I feel all my years today. Oh my god. One hundred thirty-eight names.”
“What about Ms. Sunden?” asks the woman, trying for lightness, her bitterness showing through.
“They said they don’t need her memories anymore. They. The strangers. The others. The shadows, I think, suits them best. Not quite there, never really substantial. I’d very much like to know why they changed their minds. It happened just after she graced my servers with her presence. Now they say they’re ready to proceed. My people are loading the fabs onto a ship as we speak.”
“You’re just letting her go?”
“Ah. No. I’d prefer to, but the shadows are fickle, and I may still need her, so I told Hiro to track her down.”
“And the shadows?”
The old man pauses, a long match burning slowly in his hand. “When I was a young man, I wanted to explore the world, but that faded, as the years passed, and I understood its systems, and for decades now the world has been as legible as a chessboard. But the shadows … I never thought I’d find anything like them. Part of me still thinks this must be self-delusion, like I’m like some sun-dazed early Christian hearing voices in the wind. They’re a wonder.”
“They’re frightening.”
“I hate to say it but I agree. It’s crossed my mind to keep my word and let them be, but it just won’t do. Moreover, Andy insists they’ve developed computer hardware more than a billion times faster than anything on the market, which would be hard to believe if I hadn’t seen their other efforts. I guess we’ll see when we harvest the nodes, or finally get that phone.”
“My love?” says the woman.
“Yes?”
“What will you do when I’m gone?”
“Après toi, le déluge,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine making plans.”
The surgeon stops the video, leans in across his desk. Thales is aware of the room’s darkness, its stillness. The surgeon asks, “Will he honor his agreement?”
Go fuck yourself, Thales thinks as he says, “Absolutely.”
The physician stands and heads for the door.
“Wait,” says Thales, standing in turn, aware that this is his moment, and that it’s about to slip away. His voice is hard, not recognizably his own. “We’re not done.”
The physician stops and stares at him, his face unreadable.
Thales’ resentment and confusion coalesce into a singularity of purpose that permits him to reach into his jacket and put his hand on the gun. He says, “Give me the tablet. Do it now,” and he’s ready to draw, even to fire a warning shot, but the physician, unperturbed, offers the tablet, saying, “Here.”
Thales says, “If there’s a password, security, if you’ve somehow locked me out—”
“There’s no reason for me to do that,” the surgeon says. “Everything is now open to you. Goodbye.”
He leaves, closing the door behind him.
Thales wakes the tablet. It has many folders, one with his name.
He opens it. There are his memories.
49