The room is cylindrical, with a ceiling so high above the floor-mounted lights that it might as well be the night sky. The lamps around the periphery amplify the shadow of the man who paces before Draiken in circles. He’s not quite as fat as he will become by the time he journeys to Greeve, but even at this moment from a lifetime ago he’s a soft figure, tending toward the round; with cheeks already beginning their sad transformation into jowls.
It took Draiken his prisoner no time at all to peg him as the worst kind of man to ever be given power over another: the kind whose inadequacies have pursued him his entire life. The fat man was a disappointment to his parents, a target in the playground, a sweaty non-entity to any women he might have half-heartedly tried to impress. His distastefulness has likely impeded his rise in his own organization as well. He will never be a leader. He will always be the man who facilitates the decisions of leaders, the man who always stands one step behind and one step down, waiting for the orders to be passed down from on high.
He resents this and is thus a perfect candidate for torturer.
He has never demanded information. He’s wheedled.
Draiken in turn has been a most unsatisfactory interview subject, in part because he has no intention of cooperating and in part because even if he wanted to the questions are meaningless; he has no agenda, he’s running no game, he has no hidden masters he can betray; even if he wanted to talk there’s nothing he could say.
The man he will one day know as Janus says, “Would you like to know the one thing that puzzles me, my friend?”
Draiken says, “I am not your friend, and I am certain that any number of things puzzle you.”
“I am puzzled by your refusal to lie.”
“That’s interesting. I thought you were after the truth.”
“Oh, I am, I am. But the key motivation guiding a prisoner’s conduct during an enhanced interrogation such as this has classically always been the cessation of pain. Faced with a question he cannot answer, either because he does not actually possess the information or more likely possesses an overwhelming duty to withhold it, any prisoner in a situation like yours will usually seek other means of relief…which will often concocting some fable believable enough to simulate cooperation.” He assumes a falsetto. “Yes, Captain, I do think I remember the man you’re talking about. He had brown eyes, a droopy mustache, and a wooden leg. He gave the orders. You should send all your men out to go looking for him now. See? I’m cooperating. With a fiction, of course. But cooperating. And yet, you haven’t tried that tactic at all. Why not?”
The imprisoned Draiken chuckles. “Two reasons.”
“Oh?”
“First, I know the torture playbook.”
“And what would that say?”
“It says that any answer I give you, true or false, will always be assumed to be false until you obtain independent verification. Until then, you will press harder, with ever more extreme methods, on the theory that the truth can be found in the careless liar’s tendency to contradict himself.” He offers his tormentor a sardonic nod. “I am not a careless liar. I am in fact an excellent one. I have been trained by the best. But that just means your assumption that I will contradict myself eventually will only encourage you to do whatever you can to break me. Therefore no lie, and no truth, will ever make my situation better in this room. Telling you anything can only make my situation worse.”
There is no smile from the man he will someday know as Janus. “And your second reason?”
“Exists as a direct result of the first. If respecting your power over me presents no concrete advantage over defying you, then your power over me is imaginary and defying you is the only option that makes sense.”
The man Draiken will someday know as Janus responds with a nod: simple, honest, unsurprised, not at all the gesture of a torturer thrown off his stride. “That is excellent reasoning, my friend. I applaud every word of it. You do recognize, of course, that it has a corollary in my own behavior.”
“Of course it does,” Draiken replies. “If you obtain the same total lack of results whether you break me or not, then you have no reason not to attempt to break me as long as you’re here.”
The other man nods. “As long as we understand each other, then. My mission is to break you for the sake of breaking you. I will be back this time tomorrow.”
He exits. Or Draiken can only assume he exits. It is hard to tell. What happens is, he strides out of Draiken’s proscribed field of vision, and a few seconds later a door slams somewhere in the part of the room that Draiken cannot see. One by one the lights at the base of the curved walls click off, ceding their territory to darkness until the last one goes and Draiken is abandoned to yet another night of anticipating what new angle of attack they might take with him tomorrow.
This is the terrible moment that he realizes:
He’s losing.
* * *
Draiken awakes ahead of the alarm, gasping, one hand clutching his chest. It takes him long seconds to recall where he is and how he ended up here, but once he does he mutters a soft obscenity, more out of self-loathing than any other reason.
Once upon a time he dreamed of that room so often that he endangered his health by avoiding sleep for days on end. Here on Greeve the dream has been at most an occasional annoyance, the periodic reminder of a life that he has tried to escape. It must have been a year or more since the last time he closed his eyes and found himself returned to that room, but being forced back into old ways of thinking has clearly taken its toll.
He is too old for this.
It would be nice to have a week to prepare.
It would be nicer to not have to do this at all.
But the nap has been beneficial well out of proportion to its length. His mind feels clearer, his confidence in his wits restored to something close to their current peak efficiency.
He will need to confirm that his stage has been properly set.
He rises and takes his place at the workstation, cycling through monitor functions until he activates a holo of the Glass Cathedral interior. What pops into view is the familiar circular room, defined by the central moon pool and the transparent walls now as black as the night beyond them. A white-haired figure clad in wet suit sits cross-legged by the pool, wearing the special contradictory expression of the simultaneously alert and skeptical. He has followed instructions and has come alone. His companions must be one short distress signal away, but for the moment at least he is alone, and on Draiken’s ground.
He is nobody Draiken recognizes.
That is unexpected. Draiken can summon many faces from the old days, the largest number of them from his time in custody. But the face in the monitor is a stranger. Of course, he might still turn out to be someone Draiken knows; the worlds beyond Greeve possess any number of techniques capable of turning an old man into a young one, or a notorious set of features into a more anonymous one. But Draiken’s instincts continue to insist: no such explanation applies here. He has never met this man. This man is too young to have been one of the tormentors from his past life. He is someone new, an unknown quantity.
This does make sense.
It has been many years.
Draiken drums his fingertips of the console, considering how this affects things, and after a while decides that it changes nothing.
It is his nature to ask the questions, to demand the answers.
He stands. Flexes. Regards the airlock door as a nauseated man would regard a plate of food he’s been assured he must eat, then leaves the little chamber and enters the airlock.
Thirty seconds later he again deep underwater, kicking his way toward the glittering bubble at the base of the Glass Cathedral.
He breaks surface at the center of the moon pool, by happenstance facing a direction where the white-haired man is not within his field of vision, but then he turns in the water and spots him.
Discounting any hypothetical rejuvenation treatments, the white-haired man cannot be older than forty. He
has a smooth, chiseled face missing any of the scars left by time, and a forehead that has yet to develop even the first of its wrinkle lines. He seems genial enough, though his penetrating gaze is that of a man who cannot quite figure out the species of the creature he beholds.
He speaks in the refined accent of New London, the diplomatic hub of the Hom.Sap Confederacy. “I must say, I had my friends on the surface keeping an eye out for some kind of boat. Did you actually swim here under your own power? That‘s remarkable. I commend you, sir.”
Draiken doesn’t bother to answer him. He hauls himself out of the water, keeping the pool between himself and the white-haired man. He half-expects to be attacked at this, his most vulnerable moment, but the other man keeps his distance and allows him to choose his position on the chess board undisturbed.
They stand as approximate equals with the comforting barrier of moon pool between them.
Several seconds pass in silence as the slight incline of the floor toward the pool, channels the water dripping from Draiken’s body into rivulets, returning to the sea where they belong.
Then white-haired man shrugs and turns his attention toward the ocean of black on the other side of the glass. “This structure is also remarkable, sir. Pointless, of course, but remarkable; a true curiosity, left over from some age when the project must have made some kind of sense, to somebody. Now, of course, not one of the briefings I received about this place even bothered to mention it. It certainly leads a restless mind to wonder: just how many artifacts once considered vital but now entirely useless remain from times where the forces in power once believed in them. Perhaps you are familiar with the phenomenon, sir?”
Draiken doesn’t provide that the dignity of an answer.
The white-haired man sighs, turns away from the glass, and spreads his arms, palms outward. “Do you have the disk?”
Draiken doesn’t answer that either.
The white-haired man doesn’t even look annoyed. “Very well. You issued the invitation. You can go first.”
Draiken says, “Who are you?”
“My name would not be useful to you. You may call me Brent for the purposes of this conversation.”
Draiken resolves to not call him Brent. “Who do you work for?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“The fat man, the one traveling under the name Grade…”
“He’s none of your business either.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
The other man responds with a kind smile. “All right.”
“Do you work for him, or for somebody else?”
“Also: none of your business.”
“Why?”
“Because, as far as we could determine in the limited time we’ve had, you’re just a local fisherman. Our business with him really does have nothing to do with you.”
“Persuade me of that.”
Brent brings his fist up to his lips, and clears his throat at length. “I’m not certain what I could say that you would find adequate.”
“Try.”
“Very well. It’s clear from your behavior that you’re somebody from his past.”
“And?”
“It took the work of an hour to establish that the locals call you John. You’re no stranger to the people of Fritaun, but no close friend. Nobody we spoke to knows your last name, but nobody seems to care. They consider you a harmless eccentric and assert that you’ve been here, fishing these waters, for at least thirty years. This places you well outside any period my people are interested in.”
“You sent your men to attack me.”
“My men acted on their own initiative.”
“Why?”
“They had no problem with you taking Mr. Grade to the prostitute, or even with you leaving him there, in what we presume to be a drugged state. Lying drugged under the protection of a whore is not out of character for him, after all.”
Draiken growls. “Watch how you speak about her.”
“As you wish. They were, in any event, willing to let whatever business you have with him pass without interruption. But then they saw you enter and leave Mr. Grade’s hotel room in his absence. They suspected you of taking something that belongs to him, and considered intervention prudent.”
“What would you say if I told you I suspected Grade of coming to this world to look for me?”
“Whoever you are: I would consider you demented.”
“Again: persuade me.”
The man he cannot bring himself to think of as Brent sighs. “Who could you possibly be, John? Some ancient terrorist or war criminal who’s been keeping his head down for a lifetime? Some intelligence professional who’s outlived any possible secret he might still have, rattling around in his head? At the very most grandiose extreme, some deposed head of state hiding from imaginary assassins? Think about it. What conceivable past could render you even remotely relevant to anybody still in power at this late date?”
“We were contemporaries, he and I. And here you are, tracking him.”
“You might have been contemporaries once, John. Decades ago, before you came to this planet, your path crossed his, and the two of you had business together. Maybe you fought together, and maybe you fought each other; maybe both. Maybe you once shared secrets you consider cataclysmic. But he clearly lasted in his line of work longer than you did. Whatever the circumstances of your own exit, he hung on until about ten years ago…and I don’t mind telling you that he was regarded a sad old has-been even then. He has nothing that could possibly interest anybody of importance…and that means you must have even less.”
It is taking everything Draiken has to avoid trembling with rage. “Why are you here, then?”
“To fulfill the most boring of all possible purposes, John. Think about it: whatever we can say about how he ended it, he still served with distinction, and retired with honor. When a man like him decides to change residences, even if it’s just to disappear in some out-of-the-way hole like Fritaun to drink and whore himself into oblivion…there are always a couple of us sticking around just long enough to make sure he’s safe, and settled in comfortably. It’s a retirement benefit. Nothing more.”
Draiken is accustomed to being lied to. He’s been manipulated, cheated, drugged, brutalized into believing things that weren’t true, and more. His bullshit detector has never been flawless. But there have also been times, in his life, when the truth was presented to him and the perspective it offered was so undeniable that it landed like a nearby burst of thunder.
This is one of those times.
Whether he likes it or not, he’s been freed.
And he’s also been told that he’s no longer relevant to the world he fled.
He’s not sure that the comfort of one is worth the insult of the other.
He turns away and faces the dark water through the panoramic glass on his side of the moon pool. It is impossible to make out any of the life he knows to fill these waters, but he is aware that there is an entire complex ecosystem, that continues to thrive regardless of the secrets and struggles of men. It is oblivious to anything that goes on inside the Cathedral. After a few seconds, he says, “At one point in the old days Grade ran a kind of…penal colony…”
“Yes,” the other man says, with sudden interest. “Is that where you knew him from? Were you one of his inmates?”
Draiken ignores the question. “Does it still exist?”
“I’m obliged to tell you that the answer’s none of your business, but you clearly do have a proprietary interest, so I’ll share this much. No, John. That particular place no longer exists. It was no longer considered useful, so it was decommissioned. If you made a pilgrimage to the site where it stood, you would find nothing but ruins.”
“Was it rebuilt somewhere else?”
The white-haired man spreads his arms again. “You know I can’t confirm or deny. But I’m sure you can guess. The world moves on. It figures out different ways of dealing with its probl
ems. It refines some techniques and discards others. All in all, John, depending on where you draw the lines, the answers are wherever you want them to be. But there’s no reason to them to involve you anymore. Once you return Grade’s stolen property, this can end.”
“You won’t look for me,” Draiken says.
“No reason,” the white-haired man replies. “You’ve been contained.”
That is perhaps the worst thing the white-haired man could have said to him.
But he must admit to himself it rings true.
So he removes the disk from his belt and tosses it across the moon pool, where the white-haired man snatches it from the air.
Draiken says: “If I ever see you again, this will not end the same way.”
“That is true,” the white-haired man replies, “but perhaps not in the way you imagine. Good luck, sir.”
“Go to hell,” Draiken replies. “Sir.”
He dives into the moon pool and begins paddling downward. He is aware that this is the most dangerous moment; if the white-haired man has a trap planned, it will be sprung now, with the disk retrieved and all possible intelligence mined. Even as the black waters close over him again, he fully expects to find himself surrounded by divers, brought down by a dart, drowning in a net. Indeed, as he heads straight down, toward the shed where he intends on waiting out the next few days in silence, he thinks he sees a terrible shape draw close enough to eclipse the entire world, and he feels a great relief descend upon him, with the thought that he has not made a fool of himself by imagining himself surrounded by danger, that the forces he has never been able to trust proved trustworthy after all, by betraying him exactly as he always expected to be betrayed.
But the shape, more sensed than seen, continues to glide on past, and he belatedly recognizes it what it is: a bladderfish, essentially a big gas-filled balloon, big and round and mindless and no good for any purpose human beings know: not as food and not as bait and not even as a threat to be avoided.
It is the illusion of danger, nothing more.
It is, he realizes decades too late, the very life he has lived on Greeve, personified by a creature with the brains of a sponge.
Sleeping Dogs Page 5