death line, coiled it, secured it with an impervium tie, inserted it into an impervium pouch, and stowed it away in his pack for possible later use.
“Someone thinks you are the Prophet,” his pedia said, “and wants to kill you.”
“Or the Prophet thinks I’m a threat.”
“Your task becomes more imperative: identify the Prophet.”
“You identify him for me,” Riley said.
Someone didn’t like him. Or feared him. Or distrusted him. He needed to find out why, and remembered Ham’s comment that no one knew why he was on the ship or what his intentions were. That was, of course, true. And it would be better for him, and for what he had to do, or decided not to do, if it remained true.
He retired to his cubicle, inspecting all the possible traps his would-be assassin might have planted for him, and went to sleep thinking about why he was there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Riley remembered how his personal pilgrimage began:
The room’s absence of light oppressed him. Not just dark. The light seemed to have been swallowed, consumed. He had the feeling that if he had a light stick with him, it would have cast a cone of black.
He thought he knew what was doing this to him: a phased transmitter that canceled light waves. It also canceled sound better than a room designed as an anechoic chamber. And he knew its purpose: to soften him up, to make him agree to anything in order to regain the real world of sight and sound. But what did they want—and who were “they”? He tried to feel his way around, ignoring the possibility that he could run into something dangerous or even fatal, or that he might be standing at the edge of a bottomless pit, but there was nothing to touch, not even a sensation of touch or even the feeling of weight on his body or the connectedness of muscle, nerve, and bone. Even if he had a light stick, he wouldn’t have been able to feel it, much less turn it on.
Whatever they were trying to do wouldn’t work. They couldn’t make him scream and beg no matter how long they left him in this place. Whoever they were.
He would keep himself sane by going back over the events that had brought him here.
For more days than he could remember, he had lost himself in the sim section of the pleasure-world habitat of Dante off Rigel. Sharn had left him twenty days before, saying that he didn’t need a friend or even a companion, he needed a nurse and a chiatrist. He knew what he needed: a job, a feeling of worth, a confirmation that life was better than death. Governments and corporations recruited industrial and interspecies spies, they hired assassins and mass murderers, but no one seemed interested in the services of an unspecialized soldier of fortune.
He could remember bits and pieces of what followed: ceutically induced euphoria followed by depression eased by more ceuticals; encounters in the dark with what he took to be sims but might have been real women; similar encounters in the glare of midday and the exposure of the marketplace; massages that blended into nerve stimulation that blended into sensory overload and free-associating drift; battles that maimed and slaughtered thousands, and one-on-one barroom fights with their satisfying impact of fist on flesh, given and received; and all sim, including himself. Or so he thought.
He had tired of excess, wearied of indulgence, sickened of depravity, and had pressed the panic button next to his right hand, roused himself from his tank, and checked out, determined to seek Sharn and build a new life, maybe together. But multiple assailants had waited for him in a corridor almost as dark as this place. He had disposed of several of them, one fatally he thought, before they had taken him out with a blow to his head. Of course they might have been handicapped by instructions to capture him alive.
Or maybe it all was part of his sim-experience, and he had been removed from his tank already anesthetized. Or maybe what he was experiencing now was a sim that
“Someone thinks you are the Prophet,” his pedia said, “and wants to kill you.”
“Or the Prophet thinks I’m a threat.”
“Your task becomes more imperative: identify the Prophet.”
“You identify him for me,” Riley said.
Someone didn’t like him. Or feared him. Or distrusted him. He needed to find out why, and remembered Ham’s comment that no one knew why he was on the ship or what his intentions were. That was, of course, true. And it would be better for him, and for what he had to do, or decided not to do, if it remained true.
He retired to his cubicle, inspecting all the possible traps his would-be assassin might have planted for him, and went to sleep thinking about why he was there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Riley remembered how his personal pilgrimage began:
The room’s absence of light oppressed him. Not just dark. The light seemed to have been swallowed, consumed. He had the feeling that if he had a light stick with him, it would have cast a cone of black.
He thought he knew what was doing this to him: a phased transmitter that canceled light waves. It also canceled sound better than a room designed as an anechoic chamber. And he knew its purpose: to soften him up, to make him agree to anything in order to regain the real world of sight and sound. But what did they want—and who were “they”? He tried to feel his way around, ignoring the possibility that he could run into something dangerous or even fatal, or that he might be standing at the edge of a bottomless pit, but there was nothing to touch, not even a sensation of touch or even the feeling of weight on his body or the connectedness of muscle, nerve, and bone. Even if he had a light stick, he wouldn’t have been able to feel it, much less turn it on.
Whatever they were trying to do wouldn’t work. They couldn’t make him scream and beg no matter how long they left him in this place. Whoever they were.
He would keep himself sane by going back over the events that had brought him here.
For more days than he could remember, he had lost himself in the sim section of the pleasure-world habitat of Dante off Rigel. Sharn had left him twenty days before, saying that he didn’t need a friend or even a companion, he needed a nurse and a chiatrist. He knew what he needed: a job, a feeling of worth, a confirmation that life was better than death. Governments and corporations recruited industrial and interspecies spies, they hired assassins and mass murderers, but no one seemed interested in the services of an unspecialized soldier of fortune.
He could remember bits and pieces of what followed: ceutically induced euphoria followed by depression eased by more ceuticals; encounters in the dark with what he took to be sims but might have been real women; similar encounters in the glare of midday and the exposure of the marketplace; massages that blended into nerve stimulation that blended into sensory overload and free-associating drift; battles that maimed and slaughtered thousands, and one-on-one barroom fights with their satisfying impact of fist on flesh, given and received; and all sim, including himself. Or so he thought.
He had tired of excess, wearied of indulgence, sickened of depravity, and had pressed the panic button next to his right hand, roused himself from his tank, and checked out, determined to seek Sharn and build a new life, maybe together. But multiple assailants had waited for him in a corridor almost as dark as this place. He had disposed of several of them, one fatally he thought, before they had taken him out with a blow to his head. Of course they might have been handicapped by instructions to capture him alive.
Or maybe it all was part of his sim-experience, and he had been removed from his tank already anesthetized. Or maybe what he was experiencing now was a sim that
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