“Yes, Master Drex,” she answered in a flat voice and stood up stiffly. “Welcome home.”
Julia rarely wore any clothing at all when he was home alone with her. He preferred it that way. But he realized that sometime during the day she had independently donned her gray Servant jumpsuit, as if with a last vestige of instinct. It bothered him, but he couldn’t figure out why.
Sighing, Drex went into his sleeping area and activated the floor. The heaters began to work, and the crosslinked polymer strands altered their structure, slowly turning the hard, rubbery floor into a soft and pliant cushion on which he and Julia would sleep. Drex stepped out onto the sleepfloor, and his feet sank into the pleasantly warm floor substance. “Come here, Julia.”
He had already eaten from a machine at the Guild headquarters, but now he wanted to relax, to loosen up, to burn off some of his restless energy. Drex began to unfasten his clothes. He didn’t think he had the patience to give Julia detailed step-by-step instructions now. That had proved awkwardly funny in the past, but tonight he wanted just some quick sex and then a long sleep. Drex barked at the walls to dim the lights further, and his suite began to feel more homelike, more comfortable.
Julia shuffled toward him and almost lost her balance as she stepped onto the soft sleepfloor. Drex sat down casually and propped himself up on one elbow. As he smiled at her, the indigo-dyed crow’s-feet clenched together around his eyes.
A series of muffled melodious tones interrupted him as The Net spontaneously unscrambled his door code. The entrance to his suite whisked open by itself.
Drex sat up sharply, puzzlement outweighing his fear. Silhouetted in the reddish glow from his walls, four figures stood in the entryway and, in unison, they walked into his rooms.
“How did you get in here! Who are you?” Drex tried to struggle to his feet, but the soft floor did not cooperate. He shouted for the lights to come on fully; the illumination dazzled him, but didn’t seem to bother the four intruders. He blinked and tried to wave the brightness away so he could see again.
“We’ve come for your Servant,” one of them said.
Taken aback at the ridiculous idea, Drex scowled. “Well, you can’t have her! What are you talking about?”
His eyes grew accustomed to the light, and immediately he noticed something odd about the intruders. Two of them marched purposefully forward toward Julia, then gently took her by the arm. “Come with us, Julia.”
Outnumbered and afraid, Drex could do nothing but stand helpless.
Then he recognized the pale dead skin of the intruders, their hairless faces, smears of makeup, their bald scalps imperfectly hidden by caps and hats, as if they had been in a rush to throw on disguises. A numbing horror grew in him. Servants? Impossible! But the more he stared at their eyes, their faces, their actions, the more certain he became. It couldn’t be possible. Servants did not act as vigilantes to free their own kind. It was absurd.
“Command: Release her!” he shouted in an authoritative tone.
As if they had grasped a hot iron, the two Servants escorting Julia jerked back their hands and stood paralyzed. With some amount of self-satisfaction Drex watched their faces fall.
Then, before he could think of something else to say, before his lips could shift themselves into a smile, one of the other Servants launched himself at Drex with dizzying speed. The Guildsman couldn’t move his eyes fast enough as the intruder flew forward to clap his hand across Drex’s mouth, stifling further words. The force of the Servant’s hand crushed his lips against his teeth, smashing his gums. A crunching pop and a nauseating pain told Drex that two front teeth had broken free of their sockets. He tasted a mouthful of blood. He tried not to whimper.
Drex collapsed to his knees as the Servant released him. “Not another word from you,” he said coldly, “or I’ll pluck out your vocal cords!”
Blood dribbled from between Drex’s bruised lips. His skin crawled at the dry, cold touch of the Servant’s dead flesh. His eyes were bright with infuriated and helpless tears; his body shook as he fought back sobs.
Without looking at Drex again, the leader of the Servants went over to Julia and lovingly, it seemed, ran his pallid fingers along her cheek. The male Servant’s face shone with childlike awe. “Julia…”
The four intruders hurried her out the door. She followed them without resisting. They even had the maddening courtesy to close his door and scramble-seal it behind them.
Now Drex’s tears of rage burst forth, and he spat out blood and teeth. Squatting, he pounded on the floor, but its soft, warm texture absorbed the blows and tried to comfort him.
33
Blank slate.
Julia gazed at him, not moving, as if someone had awkwardly positioned a rag doll. Danal stared back, trying to lock eyes with her, until he finally looked away. His fists clenched. Damn, it had to work! He shook his head, ignoring exhaustion, and stood up, realizing how sore and stiff his knees had become. He wanted a drink of water; his throat felt dry.
The other Wakers left them undisturbed at the water level. “Don’t you remember anything?” he begged. With the harsh sunlamps shining down on Julia from far above, Danal pictured himself as an evil interrogator in a room. Turning his back, Danal avoided looking at this caricature of Julia—it hurt him too much. Julia had gone away and left only this puppet behind.
“I remember everything I have been told,” she answered.
Danal jumped, then frowned at himself. “I mean about your first life, with Vincent Van Ryman?”
Her voice had a numb, prerecorded quality to it. “No. I don’t remember anything.”
Danal took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and continued.
Dangling cords swayed from above as he pulled a high-resolution terminal toward him—the kind intended for home use, much like the one his father Stromgaard had long ago used to play electronic games. Danal called up the protocol of images he had compiled.
“Look at these again, Julia. I want you to give it your full attention.” It was the sixth time he had shown them to her, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep trying. “I’ve already explained why I need you to remember. You’re a real person named Julia who was killed and brought back to life. I want you to find those memories. I did it—I know you can.”
The grayness of the screen dissolved into a view of the isolated oceanside of Point Reyes, not exactly the spot he and Julia had once visited, but the closest file image he could find. “We went there, you and me. It was your first time in a hovercopter.” Vivid memories flooded into his own mind, so bright, so clear; his eyes took on a faraway look, and he smiled.
The scene changed to a full-detail image of Vincent Van Ryman’s face, lifted from one of the Net periodicals. “That was me. This was you.”
The next image showed a graphically massaged photo of Julia; Rikki had processed a new image of the Servant Julia, adding hair, expression, life, to make her look as she had once been, with high cheekbones and pointed chin, pretty features, bright eyes ready to disagree or to laugh, depending on her mood.
Next came the inverted star-in-pentagram logo. Summary files lifted from the current-events databases, describing how Vincent Van Ryman had challenged the neo-Satanists. “Do you remember these? The neo-Satanists? What we did together?”
“No.”
With Rikki’s sophisticated Net skills, they had been able to recreate on screen the white-light hologram of the beach, which had rested above the mantel in the Van Ryman mansion. “Do you remember this picture?”
“No.”