Reede forced himself to stop looking everywhere, stop twitching, frowning, tapping his foot as the guard cursed and repeated his unanswered request for a fourth time, and then a fifth. A desperate voice inside of him tried to tell him that what he was doing was insane; that he was taking an insane risk coming here. But he had to do this, he had to keep the Source looking only at him, thinking about him, or the others would never escape. He would only get out of here alive if they did. He needed to do this. … He had to trust himself.
“Goddammit—” the guard said.
The Source’s voice answered them abruptly, a shower of words falling out of the air, completely unintelligible.
The guard looked up, frowning. “What did he say—?”
“He said, ‘Come on up,’” Reede snapped. He pushed through the yielding barrier of the security shieldwall, and when it did not stop him, the guard didn’t either. “Go on,” the guard said, resigned. “You know the way.”
He knew the way. The lift took a very long time getting there. He thought about how often, since his first, forced, visit to the Source, he had had nightmares of being trapped in one of these fucking things. Almost as often as he had dreamed about drowning… .
The lift let him out at last, in the deceptively ordinary reception area before the unmarked doors that opened on darkness. He glanced at his watch, checking the time again as he crossed the open space. He had to make this take long enough, just long enough… . The guards, human and electronic, let him pass without comment; the doors welcomed him.
Reede stopped just inside, as the doors sealed shut behind him; feeling his heart miss a beat. His sweating hands tightened around the precious vial of silver fluid. I am the god of death…. “Master,” he said, straining in the blackness for an almost undetectable glimmer of red. “I have it.”
“Kullervo,” the Source’s voice whispered, perfectly clear to him now. Yes. He saw it now, the faint glow of ember-light. “The water of life? Bring it to me. Bring it here.…”
He started forward, shuffling his feet, moving cautiously despite the eagerness in the Source’s voice. He reached the seat in which he was always forced to sit, finding it abruptly in the darkness. He began to grope his way around it.
“Come here,” the Source said. “Come closer. Give it to me—”
Reede obeyed, moving like a man working his way through a minefield as he approached the dim, indefinable silhouette. He had never been permitted to approach this closely before. For all he knew, this could be another illusion, another projection—for all he knew, he could be here alone. But he thought not.
He collided with the impenetrable edge of something that abruptly stopped his forward momentum. He fumbled in front of him with his hands, finding a flat, cold surface that stung the hypersensitive skin of his fingers. “Here it is, Master.” He set the vial down on it, working by touch, and began to back away.
“Stop,” the Source said. “Come forward again.”
Reede unlocked his muscles and moved forward again, until he encountered the hard edge of the obstacle between them. He folded his fingers over the edge, clung to it, grateful that it was still there, separating them.
A sudden beam of blue-violet light struck him, falling on him from above, bathing him in blinding brilliance. He shut his eyes against the glare, his shirt fluorescing like a strange flower in the darkness. For you, Mundilfoere… . He let his hands drop to his sides, letting her memory form a sublime and exalted space within him, an adhani of perfect calm in which he endured whatever perverse scrutiny was being inflicted on his body and his soul. The light went out again, abruptly. He waited, motionless.
“So, you’ve actually done it …” the Source whispered. “You’ve synthesized a form of the water of life which we can reproduce, and sell—”
“Yes. Master.”
“You told Gundhalinu it was impossible.”
“I said I lied about that.”
“But you wouldn’t lie to me,” the Source whispered. “Would you—?”
“No, Master,” he said.
“You told me it would take a long time to find the answer. But you’ve found it already?”
“I had a lot of time to think, while I was recovering.” Somehow he kept the words uninflected.
“I’m sure you did. I hope you have given a lot of thought to humility, and futility.”
“Yes, Master.”
“And if I take this, I will find it to be as good as the original.”
“Better,” Reede said softly. “It’s better.”
There was a moment of silence. “In what way?” the Source asked.
“It’s stable. Just what you asked for. I found a way to extend its life outside of the mer’s body. Makes it easier to produce, and ship, and sell—”
A beam of blinding light struck the invisible surface in front of him like a sword, focused on the vial he had set there. He shut his eyes again against the brilliance; he could see its line of brightness through his closed lids.
And then, as suddenly, there was only darkness again. He opened his dazzled eyes, blinking uselessly.
“Well?” the Source demanded suddenly, his voice disintegrating with impatience. “What is it?”
“What—?” Reede broke off, as he realized the Source was not speaking to him now, but instead demanding an answer from the hidden data system that had just run an analysis on the contents of his vial.
He heard a sudden rustling in the darkness, as if something had moved abruptly, and a guttural noise that might have been a curse. He waited; invisible, implacable.
“Congratulations, Reede …” the Source’s voice murmured at last. “Or should 1 congratulate Vanamoinen? It is what you say it is … perfect. Better than before. You truly are a genius—” Something in his voice made Reede freeze with the sudden fear that his usefulness had ended, and he was about to die. But the Source chuckled unexpectedly, and muttered, “Who knows what new worlds you will conquer for me?”
Reede did not answer. Drink it, he thought. Come on, take it, you putrescent bastard. Drink it, “The first dose is yours, Master,” he said finally, trying to keep the urgent need out of his voice. “That’s why I brought it straight to you. So you could be the first.”
“What?” the Source said, with faint mockery. “You didn’t try it first on yourself, like you did with the water of death?”
“What’s the point?” Reede said harshly. “It wouldn’t do me any good. It’s yours, Master …” adding just the right note of bitterness, “just like I am.”
“Yes,” the Source murmured. “Yes, that’s fitting.”
Reede heard another rustling sound, as if someone had shifted his weight. He stared at the spot where he imagined he had set down the vial on the surface that separated them, stared so intently that he almost thought he could really make it out, limned with a faint corona of red; that he could really see a dark, shapeless form come down on it, covering it, faking it away. There was more rustling; he was sure now that the glow was brighter, that he could see clearly the misshapen lump that pretended to be a human form somewhere in front of him, when before he had not even been sure of that. It was happening, even here.
He heard a sigh of satisfaction. “At last,” the Source whispered. “It feels right…. Yes—it feels the way I remember it.”