Owain released his brother’s hand. Rhys, plainly shaken, said, “It wasn’t a bomb.” He began flexing his wrist. “Nothing to do with any munitions, at least not in the traditional sense. We think of it as a discharge. A release of potential energy.”
His face was perfectly serious. He swallowed more wine.
“We?” Owain said.
“What do you remember about the original mission? To the No-Go Zone?”
Owain didn’t want to talk about it. Especially to Rhys.
“Why are you asking me?” he said angrily. “Haven’t you seen the files?”
“It’s important you tell me yourself. Your medical reports suggest you were exposed to CNS agents that might have induced some form of aphasia and possibly selective amnesia.”
It was like a violation of his privacy. His simpering brother, making backroom judgements on his condition. Owain despised the idea that his experiences on the mission could be reduced to a series of impersonal medical syndromes.
“I gave a full report,” he insisted, though he knew it wasn’t true. “I told them everything.”
“What was the purpose of the mission?”
“To take a look at a base where covert activity was suspected.”
“Was that all?”
Owain made himself think about it. “We were field-testing new equipment.”
“What equipment exactly? “
“Does it matter? It’s the sort of thing that goes on all the time.”
“Indulge me, Owain.”
Owain watched him refill his glass.
“A new APC,” he said. “Weapons, radar and landmine detection systems.”
“Nothing else?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“There was a new boy with you. A Corporal John Vassall.”
Owain was unlikely to forget, though he’d never consciously registered the corporal’s first name.
“He was attached at the last minute,” he said.
“Do you remember why?”
“He was a remote operations specialist.”
Rhys looked encouraged. “And?”
“And what?”
“I’m interested in his extra speciality.”
Owain tried to think. Nothing would come except the image of Vassall with his face pressed to the Spectre’s window, white-eyed, his bloody mouth imploring.
“He was sent in specially, Owain. To test the device. You and your commander were fully briefed.”
Owain didn’t know what he was talking about. He had no recollection of himself and van Oost sharing any secret knowledge. But he did remember Vassall at the workstation, pulses of data flowing across the screen. Something he’d never spoken of; something no one had explained.
“What device?”
“You really don’t remember?” Rhys said with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.
Owain wanted to slap him. Rhys saw it and sat back.
“The system that’s finally going to make mincemeat of all opposition?”
Rhys made it sound frivolous, almost a joke.
Owain’s soup arrived. Minestrone, or something resembling it. Rhys had a fancy arrangement of frilly mushrooms around a dollop of greenish puree.
“You say I knew,” he remarked to Rhys when the waiter was gone.
His brother nodded, already eating.
“So why can’t I remember?”
Rhys shrugged. “You tell me. Battlefield trauma? The agents you inhaled? Wilful ignorance?” He forked a mushroom. “You still haven’t told me what happened out there.”
Owain considered. Considered whether to tell him everything or nothing at all.
“There was some sort of eruption,” he said finally. “It was like an earth tremor. The entire ground moved. It knocked me over. At the same time we were being shelled. Earth and shrapnel flying everywhere. The rest of the men were gone, dead. I didn’t hang around.”
His brother had paused to listen. Now he resumed eating.
His movements were delice and precise; he made frequent use of his napkin to swab food or wine from his lips. Owain breathed steadily, waiting.
“What device?” he finally asked again.
Rhys eyed him with scepticism. As if coming to a decision, he picked up the menu card and cleared a space in front of him. After glancing around to check that no one else was looking, he proceeded to fold the card.
Owain watched as he brought its top and bottom edges together and pressed the two end creases flat. He raised both flaps and pushed them down until they sat flat on the tabletop and the central section of the card bulged up. He began to slide both flaps in towards each other so that the dome in the middle became increasingly rounded. He continued narrowing the distance between the folded edges, finally pushing both creases together.
“Voilà!” he said.
In three dimensions the two closed edges shut off a cylinder with the cross section of an inverted teardrop. Rhys held it up so that Owain viewed it edgewise.
“Omega,” Rhys said softly.
TWENTY-NINE
Rhys had the smug air of a conjuror who had just successfully completed a trick.
“Of course on the ground it actually works the other way around,” he told Owain.
He turned the card over and held it up at both edges so that the central section sagged a little. Checking that no one was watching them, he asked Owain to dust some pepper into the middle.
Owain’s patience was rapidly evaporating again.
“Listen,” Rhys said, “I’m only doing this because you claim you can’t remember anything. I’m trying to get you to understand.”
Owain hefted the pepper mill and gave it a vigorous twist, speckling the hollow.
“Those,” Rhys said, referring to the dark grains, “are enemy forces.” Again he glanced around to ensure that no one else was looking. “Which side do you want to be advancing from—left or right?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. The principle’s the same in either direction. Assume you’re attacking from your left.” Rhys tapped his right thumb on the appropriate flap. “Enemy divisions are directly in your line of advance. Naturally you want them out of the way. CommandCom agrees to Omega activation at the target area. It’s a remote weapon, its power transferred via a satellite. The system is initiated. This happens.”
Again he slid both end flaps together so that their folded edges met. The central section had now been warped from sight.
“Gone,” Rhys said. “Taken out.”
Owain tried to match the demonstration to what he had witnessed from the ridge. Tried and failed.
“Not just your enemy,” Rhys was saying, “but the whole section of terrain they’re occupying. You continue your advance not only with them out of the way but also with your lines shortened. And without a single man or piece of equipment having been sacrificed.”
The waiter appeared again to remove their dishes. Owain hadn’t even tasted his soup. He waved it away.
Rhys refilled his glass and asked the waiter for another bottle of wine. He had slipped the folded card onto his lap at the man’s approach.
Owain contemplated all the light leaking out of the unshielded windows of the restaurant. In the square below a Stalwart APC was slowly patrolling under the starless night.
“It’s done by satellite, you said.”
Rhys shook his head. “The business end’s at home. Here. The satellite’s just the relay. We call the process T.”
“T?”
“T-E-E,” Rhys spelled out. “Short for Topographical Enfolding and Excision. You understand that I’m not at liberty to go into all the gory technical details.”