“I’m trying to save your life.”
Pratt was pleading now. “Why are you saying these things to me?”
“That’s the funny part.” My laugh didn’t sound amused, even to me. “It’s because I like you.”
Pratt only looked helpless.
“I like your place. You do a good thing here at a fair price, and you treat people better than you have to. You’re the kind of guy the world needs more of.”
“So you’re-so you’re scaring the crap out of me-?”
“Take a fucking vacation, Pratt. Take your pretty wife and your new kids south on the first steamer tomorrow. Go someplace nice. Here will not be nice. Here could get you all dead.”
“But I can’t-I can’t just-”
“I’m not kidding, Pratt.”
Pratt gave himself a little shake and managed an unsteady laugh. He swiped the thinning hair sideways across his scalp. “I. . appreciate the-uh, the warning, Freeman Shade. I do. But really, the Battleground is the safest place on Home-”
“Not anymore.”
“Well.” He sighed. “It’s the middle of the night, and my place is a wreck. I can’t make any moves until tomorrow, can I? And meanwhile, there’s still work to do, so if you don’t mind excusing me, freeman-”
I hung my head. I hate this part.
“Freeman?”
Hate it.
“Er, Freeman Shade, if you don’t mind, I really do have-”
My hand seized Pratt’s shirtfront faster than he could blink. The hosteler had just barely enough time to draw breath for a shout of alarm before my other hand flicked out to lay my palm gently along his cheek.
“You know me.”
Pratt’s shout of alarm died in his throat. His mouth worked. His eyes stared wildly for an instant, then squeezed shut, and he clapped his hands over his face and his legs buckled. He threw himself to his knees at my feet.
“Forgive me-forgive me, Lord, I did not know thee-!”
“Get up.”
Shivering on the floor, face pressed into his knees, Pratt moaned. “Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. . Ma’elKoth is Lord of Gods and Master of Home, and Caine is His One True Hand. .”
“Get up. Don’t grovel. I hate groveling.”
Pratt lifted a face transfigured by terror and awe. “My Lord?”
“And those bloody Psalms. They’re so depressing.” I pressed a hand to my head, blinking. How much of that damned grillswill had I drunk, anyway? “Just get up, huh?”
“As the Prince of Chaos commands-”
“And stop it with that shit.”
“As the-”
“Shut up.”
Pratt stood in a half crouch, cringing away from me.
“So take it as coming from Ma’elmotherfuckingKoth Himself, all right? Get thee fucking hence from this place, goddammit.”
Pratt barely allowed himself to whisper, “As the Prince of Chaos commands. .”
I left Pratt shaking on the foyer rug and stomped up the stairs toward my room.
Christ, I hate that shit.
BAD GUY
I linger upon this moment, as I have a thousand times, or a million, or only once forever; no number can signify, because times have no more meaning than does Time. All of you is present here: your painful birth and your blasted childhood, your criminal youth and murderous manhood, your sad slipping-down maturity and all your many deaths-
And yet none of you is here now, too.
In this moment, for this moment, you have erased yourself. No longer an Actor, a man, Hari Michaelson, Caine.
You vanish into the legend you are still creating.
The conference room is institutional green. The conference table is faux-granite grey. The conference chairs are mauve.
Do they look comfortable to you?
Do you somehow sense the quantum smear of futures in which you’ll someday sit in them-when you’ll have conversations too much like this one with other, younger Actors?
This question will hang suspended without answer until I have voice to ask.
For now, I focus on the hum of the motorbed under your ass, on the saline drip streaming drool into your strapped-down left arm, and on the salt I taste on the back of your tongue.
The vast curving screen that fills the far wall of the conference room shows a glowing skeletonized schematic of the vertical city. The schematic rotates slowly, displaying differently colored pinpoints of light: a virtual orrery of fourteen planets.
“I, ah, must say, Michaelson,” muses the doughy troll that you call Administrator Kollberg, “you are taking all this rather, mmm, well. .”
You roll your head to the right, and without the slightest twist of emotion regard the nine inches of iron nail still jammed through your wrist. “It wasn’t exactly a surprise.”
And I love how your voice sounds inside your head, even at a dull flat hum. .
“Well, yes. When you pull the spike yourself, online-oh, that will be very dramatic.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Don’t let it concern you. You’ll get another round of injections before the retransfer. You’ll barely feel a thing. We dial down the dolorimetrics on the cube recordings anyway; no one wants to really feel your pain-the public wants to savor your suffering, not share it.”
“Yeah.”
“So think of this as an opportunity to do some real acting for a change. Make it convincing and move on. Staggering off into the darkness-”
“I want to talk to Marc Vilo.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My Patron. I want to talk to him.”
Kollberg shifts his weight backward in the comfortable looking chair and lets his thick lips flap their way through a long, slow sigh. “I’ll take that tone from you once, Michaelson. But you’re not on Overworld now. Mind your place.”
You close eyes that burn and sting. *From the air,* you tell yourself in silent monologue. *Something in the air.*
Already you narrate your life.
“Sorry, Administrator. Sorry. It was the meds talking. But please, sir, if you would only let me-”
“Entertainer.” The plump Administrator rises and folds his soft pale hands in front of his crotch. “As I have explained, Businessman Vilo has already signed off on your new contract. He’s a very busy man.”
“Please put a call through, Administrator. Please. He’ll take it. He will.”
“He may. But he won’t change anything. He can’t; Studio operations are sacrosanct. Now. Here’s your escape.” Kollberg takes a few steps toward the head of the table. One of those soft pale hands unhitches itself from his crotch and clicks a pen-size control.
The schematic of the vertical city dissolves into a new view, from the upland plateau side. One bright red star shines well away from the exit tunnel.
“This is where you will retransfer. Once you have removed the spikes from your arm and your ankle-”
“How am I supposed to have gotten all the way up there?”
Kollberg looks at you.
You swallow, and drop your eyes-a conditioned reflex? Or is the empty malice in his colorless gaze too much for the nerves of a mere Hari Michaelson? “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Please, Administrator. Continue.”
“Well.” Kollberg clears his throat: a cough delicately indulgent as a cautious pedophile’s. “Actually, it’s a fair enough question. After you retransfer, you’ll cover the continuity gap in your Soliloquy. It doesn’t take much-just a phrase or two about the struggle to crawl all that way, and something about the confusion of the battle against Pretornio’s zombies covering your escape-”
“But-” You shake your head, your face twisting to mirror the twist of sick anticipation in your stomach. “-but, well, I mean, first they’re not zombies-”