Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [48]
‘On the contrary, Sophos, it was your politic guards who informed me. And what I learned is that the Sophos are as autocratic as the most backward feudal planets, and that free thought is endangered on Scolar.’
The skin around the edge of Mianos’s nostrils whitened. He stood and walked over to the aquarium wall. With a tap of a dispenser he loosed dried blood flakes into the water. A flotilla of tiny scalpel fish nibbled the disintegrating pieces. ‘Your foolish impudence is divisive, young man. You have seen now what happens to those who choose the path of agitator. Our great world, indeed our species, needs harmony and unity, not—’
‘Not what?’ Thales interrupted. ‘Challenging, inventive thought? Harmony does not mean that we must all agree. It means that we must be able to agree to disagree.’
‘Are you lecturing me, young Thales?’ Mianos returned to the escritoire and rubbed his fingers against the side of his aspect cube. ‘Disguise your poor and irrational behaviour how you will, but know the consequences of your behaviour for yourself and your wife.’
‘I want to see Rene.’ We must leave this place.
‘But she has no wish to see you.’
‘Liar!’ Thales accused.
But as he spoke a screen on the darkest wall of the office began to unfold. It blinked alive like a watching eye.
Rene appeared, standing against vast glazed windows—Thales could not place where—her thin figure outlined by filtered sunlight. She clutched the ruche of the curtains as though they were a support and Thales had a sudden fierce desire to take her in his arms and kiss her extreme pallor. She seemed agitated and distressed. ‘Thales?’
‘Why will you not see me, Rene?’
‘I’m not sure that I can trust your reaction to . . . me. Father thought this way would be best.’
‘You are a grown woman, my wife. Could you not make that decision for yourself? Could you not trust your heart?’ Thales asked her softly. ‘I would never hurt you.’
Rene turned to stare out of the window. ‘My head is my heart, Thales. You know that.’
Thales sensed Mianos’s satisfaction. It compelled him to provoke Rene.
‘I met the prophet Villon. He was in the room in which they imprisoned me.’
She turned back sharply. ‘Villon? What nonsense is this, Thales?’
‘Nonsense, Rene? Why do you assume that I speak nonsense and your father speaks the truth?’
‘Villon left Scolar many years ago when he discovered that his extreme propaganda left us unmoved. He took it to the Extropists. They have need of belief. Any belief.’
Thales was struck by the naivety of her perception. Did she really believe that the Extropists had no beliefs?
‘Everyone has beliefs, Rene. I am saddened that ours have diverged so. But know the truth of this. I have seen Villon.’
‘Your words are delusional, Thales. You must seek help.’
‘I don’t need help. I need someone to believe me.’ Why am I the one she can so easily deny? Anguish swamped him. She would not leave with him. Not now or ever. ‘The Pre-Eminence had Villon—’
Mianos touched his aspect cube and the screen folded away, breaking Thales’s link with his wife.
‘Now remove yourself from my sight, Berniere. Your imprudence is dangerous. If you were not married to my daughter I would not have allowed you out of detention. She has pleaded for your release but you will stay away from her. And you will hold your tongue. Or you will lose it.’
The same politic guards took Thales to the foyer of the Eminence building and watched him walk across the marbled floor to the doors.
‘Msr Berniere?’
Thales turned, his heart pounding.
It was not the guards, though, but the concierge. The humanesque extended a note-film to him on a glass salver.
Thales snatched it up and read it. Rene had rented him an apartment off the Eminence Boulevard. His possessions were already there, waiting for him. That was all.
He went straight there, bagged a selection of clothes and his personal aspect cube and crossed town where he checked into a boarding house in the Hume quarter. The boarding house’s facade was differentiated from those of the many