“How’s Rudy?” I asked.
He took so long in answering it was clear he didn’t want to tell me, but I pressed him. “You broke his leg, shattered his nose, and sprained his neck. He’s in surgery.”
I closed my eyes. “Has anyone called Circe?”
“No. Mr. Church doesn’t want her to know until we have some answers.” He sat back and folded his hands on his lap. “Do we have any answers, Boss? You come up with anything while I was out?”
“Not a goddamned thing.”
We sat with that for a while.
“Poor Rudy,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
It was a long night.
INTERLUDE EIGHTEEN
Prospero’s birthday was tomorrow. He would be eighteen, and by law that would mean he should be able to walk out of Ballard without Commander Stark or any of his goon squad saying a word.
Should.
Not would.
Stark had made it very clear that he would not be leaving Ballard anytime soon.
“Sorry,” replied Prospero, “but in sixteen hours your tenure as my keeper ends. If you want to get in a few last cheap shots, go right ahead. And tomorrow, when I take possession of my trust fund, I will bring ten kinds of lawsuits down on your head. And I’ll be filing legal charges for child abuse, physical abuse, assault and battery, and a few dozen other things. If you think my father will step to your defense, then you are sadly mistaken. I’ll have you and the rest of the Ballard Neanderthals in prison within a week, see if I don’t.”
Stark, however, kept smiling. They were in the commander’s office. Alone, though there were two sergeants outside, ready to step in if needed.
“Tell me, Prospero,” said Stark, “aren’t you even a little curious as to why I am not shivering with fear right now?”
“I already know. It’s because you’re too stupid to know when you’re beat. I’m holding all the aces, motherfucker.”
“Such language,” said Stark. “However, I like a challenge. You have aces, you say? Hmm, let me see what kind of hand I can play.” The commander opened the top drawer of his desk and removed a folded sheet of paper. He waggled it between his fingers for a moment, then handed it across to Prospero. “Read it.”
Prospero hesitated, not liking this at all. But he plucked the letter away and opened it. He read it through. Then read it again. His hands were shaking by the time he finished the second pass.
“This is bullshit,” he said, slapping it down on the desk. “No way this is legal.”
“And yet it is,” said Stark pleasantly. “Signed by two psychiatrists and countersigned by the judge.”
“What doctors? I haven’t had any fucking psychiatric evaluations.”
“No?” said Stark with mock alarm. “But it says so right here, right above where it says that Judge Bernstein has remanded you to my custody until further notice.”
Prospero shot to his feet. “No! I’m leaving tomorrow and you can’t stop me. This is bullshit. This is my asshole father and you involved in criminal conspiracy.”
“This,” said Stark, reaching to take the paper back, “is legal.”
Prospero sat there, frozen, unable to think. “Why…?”
“Ah, a fair question. Let me tell you how this works,” said Stark. “And understand, this comes straight from your father, so if you need to hate someone, hate him. He has been remarkably frank with me because, you see, he trusts me. He knows that I can get results. Your father is very generous with people who are able to get him what he needs.”
“My… research…,” whispered the boy.
“Of course. From what I gather, your father obtained something very important from you a few years ago. The God Machine, I believe it’s called. That made him very happy. You were sent to me, however, because you tried to sabotage his work and punish him for taking your little toy. Even though as your father he had every right to anything of yours. Every right.”
“No,” said Prospero, but Stark ignored him.
“Your father needed you to be somewhere safe. In a place where you could continue your little science projects, but well away from him. He loves your mind, Cadet, but I fear he does not love you. So sad. Understandable, of course, because apart from your knack for science you are a psychotic, worthless pile of cold shit.”
“Go to hell,” said Prospero, but without emphasis. He felt like he was dying inside.
“As long as you continued to do research, your father was happy with the arrangement. But then you had to go and screw up the arrangement. Maybe it’s true that genius has a short shelf life, or maybe you just don’t have what it takes to be a superstar, but you seem to have peaked. Your father has become more and more disenchanted with the work you’ve done. He’s even gone so far as to speculate that you might be deliberately sabotaging your own progress so you’d burn off your last few months until you turned eighteen. And then you’d be out of here, thumbing your nose at your father and all of your friends here at Ballard.”
Prospero said nothing. They both knew it was true.
Stark nodded, however. “You are not, as it turns out, as smart as you seem to think you are. No, Mr. Bell, not by a long mile.” He tapped the sheet of paper. “This is proof. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you, my young Einstein? Bet you never even considered that there was a card we could play that would trump anything in your hand. Oooo, it must sting to be out-thought by the Neanderthals. Now, the way this works is that you will continue your research but you will light a fire under your own ass. You will no longer drag your feet, and you will produce whatever it is your father wants. You will do this as quickly as humanly possible and you will make sure that everything you do is exactly to your father’s specs. He will have his people test it. Then, and only then, will he consider having the doctors and the judge reexamine your court-mandated commitment.” Stark leaned forward. “Screw with me, Cadet, or make me look bad in front of your father, and I can promise you that there are things we can do to you that will make you believe that you are not in a nice, comfortable military academy but are, in fact, in one of the inner rings of hell itself. Have I made myself absolutely clear?”
That’s when Prospero bolted from the room, blew past the two sergeants, and tried to lock himself inside his lab. He hadn’t even managed to inflict any significant damage to the mainframe when the sergeants broke through the door and fell on him.
He barely remembered the beating.
All he knew was that Stark and the two sergeants seemed to enjoy it. He did not remember when it ended. Maybe they got tired. He had no recollection of how he got out of the lab. There was a tiny fragment of a memory of being dragged.
His next fully conscious moment was the water.
Shower water falling on the side of his face, and a familiar voice saying, “Jesus,” over and over again. Which was strange because that wasn’t his name. Or even the name of his god.
Darkness again.
The sound of dripping water found him in the dark. He was wet, he knew that much. But there was something around him keeping him warm. A towel. Several towels.
Prospero was afraid to open his eyes. He’d never been beaten this badly before. Never. Not by his father and not by anyone at Ballard. This time, though, they’d kept at it. Hitting him with telephone books because that wouldn’t leave marks. The damage was all shock wave, all internal. Slapping his testicles with loose hands. No bruises there, either. Just pain and sickness.
Other stuff. His rectum hurt again. Another kick? Something worse? There were sadists among the sergeants. Artists at pain and humiliation.