‘What’s wrong, Carl? Qualms?’
‘How do I know this won’t send a jolt directly to his pleasure centre?’
‘Look at his spinal column. Watch it thrash.’
‘Spines don’t thrash.’
‘His does. Those little mechanisms—’
It’s all the encouragement he needs. He brings his hand down, holding the contact closed for a good five or six seconds. Under the brain, the stump of spinal matter twists and flexes like a rattlesnake’s tail. He can hear it scraping glass.
He raises his hand, watches the motion subside.
‘See,’ Goodglass says, ‘I knew you’d do it.’
Grafenwalder notices that there’s some kind of heavy medical tool next to the brain tank, a thing with a grip and a clawed alloy head. With his other hand he picks it up, testing its weight. The glass container looks invitingly fragile; the brain even more so.
‘Be careful,’ Goodglass says.
‘I could kill him now, couldn’t I? Put an end to him, for ever.’
‘Many would applaud you. But then you’d be providing him with a way out, an end to this existence. On the other hand, you could send another jolt of pain straight into his mind. What would you rather, Carl? Rid the world of Trintignant and spare him further pain, or let him suffer a little longer?’
He’s close to doing it; close to smashing the tool into the glass. As close as she is, Goodglass couldn’t stop him in time. And there would be something to be said for being the man who closed the book on Trintignant. But at the decisive instant something holds him back. Nothing that the doctor did has ever touched him personally, but he still feels a compulsion to join in his torment. And as the moment passes, he knows that he could never end the doctor’s life so cleanly, so mercifully, when pain is always an alternative.
Instead, he presses the button again, and holds it down longer this time. The spine thrashes impressively. Behind him, Ursula Goodglass applauds.
‘Good for you, Carl. I knew you’d do the right thing.’
The next two weeks are an endurance. Grafenwalder must sit tight-lipped as excited rumours circulate concerning Ursula Goodglass’s new exhibit. No one mentions Trintignant by name — that would be the height of crass indiscretion — but even those who have not yet visited her habitat can begin to guess at the nature of her new prize. Even the most level-headed commentators are engaged in a feverish round of praise-giving, seeking to outdo each other in the showering of plaudits. Even though she has only been in the collecting business for a little while, she has pulled off an astonishing coup. Attention is so heated that, for a day or two, the Circle must fend off the unwanted interest of a pair of authority investigators, still on Trintignant’s trail. The bribes alone would pay for a new habitat.
Grafenwalder’s adult-phase hamadryad, meanwhile, brings no repeat visits. Now that it has lost its novelty value to the other collectors, Grafenwalder feels his own interest in it waning. He thinks of it less and less, and has increasingly little concern for its welfare. When his keepers inform him that the animal is suffering from a dietary complaint, he doesn’t even bother to visit it. Three days later, when they tell him that the hamadryad has died, all he can think about is the money he paid Captain Shallice. For an hour or so he toys with the idea of bringing the dead thing back to life with electrodes, the way Goodglass animated her specimen, but the idea that he might be seen to be playing second fiddle to her rises in him like yellow bile. He gives orders that the animal be ejected into space, and can’t even bring himself to watch it happen.
Six hours later, he contacts Rifugio.
‘I was beginning to think I wouldn’t hear from you again, Mister Grafenwalder. If you’d left it much longer I wouldn’t have anything to sell you.’
Grafenwalder can hardly keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Then it’s still available? The terms still apply?’
‘I’m a man of my word,’ Rifugio answers. ‘The terms are the same. Does that mean we have a deal?’
‘I’ll want additional guarantees. If the specimen turns out to be something other than claimed—’
‘I’m selling it to you in good faith. Take it or leave it.’
He takes it, of course, as he had known he would before he placed the call. He’d have taken it even if Rifugio had doubled his asking price. A living, captive Denizen is the only thing that will take the shine off the Circle’s new fondness for Goodglass, and he must have it at all costs.
The arrangements for payment and handover are typically byzantine, as necessity demands. For all that he distrusts men like Rifugio, they must make a living as well, and protect themselves from the consequences of their activities. Grafenwalder, in turn, has his own stringent requirements. The shipping of the creature to Grafenwalder’s habitat must happen surreptitiously, and the flow of credit from one account to another must be untraceable. It is complicated, but by the same token both men have participated in many such dealings in the past, and the arrangements follow a certain well-rehearsed protocol. When the automated transport finally arrives, bearing its precious aquatic cargo, Grafenwalder is certain that nothing has gone amiss.
He has to fight past his own keepers to view the specimen for the first time. At first, he feels a flicker of mild disappointment: it’s a lot smaller than he was expecting, and it’s not just a trick of the light due to the glass walls of the holding tank. The Denizen isn’t much larger than a child.
But the disappointment doesn’t last long. In the flesh, the Denizen appears even more obviously real than the swimming creature in the movie clip. It’s sedated when it arrives, half its face and upper torso swallowed by a drug-administering breathing device. Rifugio’s consignment comes with detailed notes concerning the safe waking of the creature. First, Grafenwalder has it moved into the main viewing tank, now topped up with cold water under one hundred atmospheres of pressure. The water chemistry is now tuned to approximate conditions near one of the Europan thermal vents. He brings the creature to consciousness in utter darkness, and monitors its progress as it begins first to breathe for itself, and then to tentatively explore its surroundings. It swims lethargically at first, Grafenwalder viewing its moving body via heat-sensitive assassin’s goggles. By all accounts the Denizens have infrared sensitivity of their own, but the creature takes no heed of him, even when it passes very close to his vantage point.
After several minutes, the creature’s swimming becomes stronger. It must be adapting to the water, learning to breathe again. Grafenwalder watches the flick of its tail in mesmerised fascination. By now it has mapped the confines of its new home, testing the armoured glass with delicate sweeps of its fingertips. It is intelligent enough to know that nothing will be gained by striking the glass.
Grafenwalder has the main lights brought up and shone into the tank. He slips the assassin’s goggles up onto his brow. The creature attempts to swim away from the glare, but the glare follows it remorselessly. Its eyes are lidless, so it can do little except screen its face with one delicately webbed hand. The wide gash of its mouth opens in alarm or anger, or both, revealing rows of sharp little teeth.
Grafenwalder’s voice booms into the water, relayed to the creature by floating microphones.