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So I say, “Nothing. Nothing is the answer. They’re not here. They never were.”
“Who? Who’s not here?”
My mouth is full of blood. I swallow. “The risk . . .”
“Yes. Very good. The risk is the key.”
“They’re not here. There are no entities downloaded into human bodies. No alien consciousness inside anyone. Because of the risk. The risk. The risk is unacceptable. It’s a . . . a program, a delusional construct. Inserted into their minds before they were born, switched on when they reached puberty—a lie, it’s a lie. They’re human. Enhanced like me, but human . . . human like me.”
“And me? If you are human, what am I?”
“I don’t know . . .”
The boot presses down, crushing my cheek against the concrete.
“What am I?”
“I don’t know. The controller. The director. I don’t know. The one chosen to . . . I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Am I human?”
“I don’t know!” And I didn’t. We’d come to the place I could not go. The place from which I could not return. Above: the boot. Below: the abyss. “But if you are human . . .”
“Yes. Finish it. If I am human . . . what?”
I am drowning in blood. Not mine. The blood of the billions who died before me, an infinite sea of blood that envelops me and bears me down to the lightless bottom.
“If you are human, there is no hope.”
80
HE LIFTS ME from the floor. He carries me to one of the cots and gently lays down my body. “You are bent, but not broken. The steel must be melted before the sword can be forged. You are the sword, Marika. I am the blacksmith and you are the sword.”
He cups my face. His eyes shine with the fervor of a religious zealot, the look of a street-corner crazy preacher, except this crazy holds the fate of the world in his hands.
He runs his thumb over my bloody cheek. “Rest now, Marika. You’r
e safe here. Perfectly safe. I’m leaving him to take care of you.”
Razor. I can’t take that. I shake my head. “Please. No. Please.”
“And in a week or two, you’ll be ready.”
He waits for the question. He’s very pleased with himself. Or with me. Or what he has achieved in me. I don’t ask, though.
And then he’s gone.
Later, I hear the chopper come to take him away. After that, Razor appears, looking as if someone shoved an apple under the skin that covered his cheek. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything. He washes my face with warm, soapy water. He bandages my wounds. He binds my fractured ribs. He splints my broken wrist. He doesn’t bother to offer me water, though he must know I’m thirsty. He jabs an IV into my arm and hooks up a saline drip. Then he leaves me and sits in a folding chair by the open door, cocooned in the heavy parka, rifle across his lap. When the sun sets, he lights a kerosene lamp and places it on the floor beside him. Light flows up and bathes his face, but his eyes are hidden from me.
“Where’s Teacup?” My voice echoes in the vast space.
He doesn’t answer.
“I have a theory,” I tell him. “It’s about rats. Do you want to hear it?”
Silence.
“To kill one rat is easy. All you need is a piece of old cheese and a spring-loaded trap. But to kill a thousand rats, a million rats, a billion—or seven billion—that’s a little bit harder. For that you need bait. Poison. You don’t have to poison all seven billion of them, just a certain percentage that will carry the poison back to the colony.”
