“There’s every reason. You’re twice my size, Linehan. Maybe they were trying to account for it and fucked up. Maybe you’re just highly receptive. What’s your normal dosage on combat drugs?”
“I don’t take combat drugs.”
“You’re kidding me. I thought all mechs did.”
“My officers always said I was a natural born psycho.”
“No arguments there. Look, I take a lot of shit to let me run zone. Razors are used to altered states, that’s all we’re ever in. No wonder you’ve been having such a hard time.”
“It’s getting harder by the moment.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell InfoCom the ayahuasca was proving so persistent?”
“I figured your team wouldn’t be that happy.”
“We could have given you an antidote.”
“Assuming you let me live, sure.”
“One rogue factor gets past the conditioning, maybe there are others?”
“Exactly.”
“Not of the sort that would matter,” says Spencer. “The InfoCom reconditioning wasn’t aimed at any recreational drugs you might have taken—”
“Recreational?”
“Whatever. Point is it was aimed at your loyalties.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Because you no longer feel like fighting for the Throne?”
“Fuck, man, as long as I was fighting, I was loving it.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“There’s no combat.”
“And?”
“And the suspense is getting to me.”
“You never struck me as the type to get scared.”
“Precisely why I’m getting so freaked out.”
They’ve emerged from the riverbed, forged on into fields purged of all harvest. Dead valley stretches all around, with two more like it stretching far overhead … all three converging on the shattered city that dominates the northern end of this cylinder. Call that city capital of memory, because that’s all it holds now. And the men now approaching it have the same problem.
“I’m going to rip your head off,” says Sarmax.
“Not so fast,” says the Operative.
“He’s right,” says Lynx.
Of course he is. Combat inside the Remoraz would be insane. Sarmax would have to blow one of the vehicle’s hatches to even turn around to face Lynx. But Sarmax seems so angry right now the Operative’s not taking any chances.
“Anyone starts anything, I’ll take ’em out myself,” he says. “Lynx, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
“I’ve got some explaining to do?”
“So start talking,” growls Sarmax.
“What’s there to explain? Guess Carson’s not as good a razor as he thinks he is. I hacked his ass, and got my cock right up in it.”
“Or Carson let you do it,” says Sarmax.
“Why the hell would I do that?” asks the Operative.
“Maybe some misguided attempt to get us all on the same page.”
“Man,” says Lynx, “you do not want to tell him any secrets. Look, Leo, sorry to hear that you’re having problems with your woman, but—”
“Watch it.”
“I am. I’m watching you lose it and I think you might be missing the point. You’re too wrapped up in it, man. You need to think about this from the only perspective that matters.”
“Which is?” asks Sarmax.
“Autumn Rain’s,” says the Operative.
Keep talking,” says Spencer. “About what?” asks Linehan.
“About what the hell is going on inside your head.”
“You are.”
“No kidding?”
“I can see straight through you and you’re hollow.”
“That’s what I called you once.”
“What?”
“That’s what I called you once,” repeats Spencer. “The original hollow man.”
“Maybe you were right.”
“I’m your handler, Linehan. I’m supposed to be right.”
“So tell me what the fuck you think is going on.”
“I think the basic core of your personality is probably disintegrating. Essentially what you are is just an empty shell held together by love of killing. Once you’re out on your own for long enough, you’ll start coming apart.”
“Is this some kind of reverse-psychology to shock some sense into me?”
“It’s just a theory about what your brain might be up to.”
“You really don’t think I’m being fucked with?”
“You were fucked with, Linehan. By InfoCom and before that by the Jags.”
“And before that by the Rain.”
“Maybe you should tell me more about that.”
Three men in a room that’s no room making passage through the land of the dead. Black landscape stretches away toward the unseen outskirts of the city at the heart of it all ….
“Don’t make me go there,” says Sarmax.
“You fucking have to,” says the Operative.
“Otherwise we can’t break this down,” says Lynx.
Sarmax nods. Going head to head with the Rain is going down memory lane—looking into the eyes of the ones he hasn’t seen for all these years. They never liked him, of course. Partially because he represented the power that brought them into existence. But mostly because they knew that one of them loved him—and for that the men and women who became the Rain could never forgive Leo Sarmax. So when they fled ahead of the Praetorian axe, the woman who called herself Indigo Velasquez had to make a choice. Her brothers and sisters won out over her lover. Her lover killed her for that. He’s had to live with himself ever since.
And that’s been getting tougher. He thought getting back in the game would be what he needed to get it all behind him. He should have known better; should have known which way this game was heading—that it would bring him to a place like this, stalking his own memories through a maze that hides far more than one mind ever could….
“Easy,” says the Operative.
“Goddamn you both,” says Sarmax. “She was real. Christ, I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have—”
There’s a lurch. The screens show the craft’s starting to sidle up hills. Starlight filters in through some fissure far above them, bathes the land in a ghostly light. Past those hills the structures of New London stretch up toward an unseen summit. Sarmax exhales slowly.
It’s funny,” says Linehan. “Looking back on all of it. Coming up in SpaceCom you start to scorn everything that crawls below. Living and breathing it, right? Working for the cause. Night’s when they say it is, and day’s whenever the sun falls upon you.”