Engineman - Eric Brown [110]
The terror passed, the nightmare ebbed and sanity returned. She found herself on the floor of the hangar, staring up at Forster. The thought of what he might do to her, the thought of the beautiful bullet in the back of her head, filled her with peace.
"Kill me..." she demanded.
Forster smiled. "Kill you? But that would be too kind a way out. You don't think for a second that you're going to get off so lightly, do you? Remember - I have been playing this game far longer than you."
He stood and walked away, the guards joining him. Ella tried to sit up, but the effort exhausted her and she lay back down. Her breathing came with difficulty, her chest heaving. Her left forearm was raw from where the incapacitator had burned her, but not as raw as the nerves of her brain. She felt as if her head had been marinated in acid, and when she closed her eyes fireballs exploded. She relived the fleeting, terrible images and brief thought-impressions of entropy and annihilation - the antithesis of everything in which she believed. It was as if her subconscious was mirroring her conscious belief in an afterlife with the exact, terrible opposite - to make her appreciate the wonder and vitality of the realm towards which she was heading.
Her torturers returned.
All she wanted was the promised bullet. Surely she had reached the requisite number of minus points by now? Surely, if they were playing by the rules, she was due her reward. But she should have known. She was dealing with an opponent whose motivation was less fair play than victory at all costs.
Forster knelt, placed his hands on his knees. "Now, Hunter, how would you like to go through that all over again? You can spare yourself the pain, the horror, and at the same time save your life, simply by answering the questions."
She braced herself for the shock of the incapacitator.
"Now, who were you contacts on the Reach?"
How could she inform on the old woman in the bar? Or tell Forster that Max Klien, Rodriguez and Jerassi were her contacts, and in so doing implicate Conchita and her daughter?
She closed her eyes, tortured with the anticipation of the brain-fire and desolation. Through gritted teeth she chanted, "We become riders of the Infinite/ Shedding our egos-"
"Two," Forster continued. "Where is you father? On the Reach or on Earth?"
"Loosing the burden of self/ Becoming One with all things." Her body tensed with the expectation of imminent neural annihilation.
'"Three. Who are your father's contacts on Earth?"
"Bless each one of us as we pass/ From illusion to reality-"
"Corporal!"
"No! Oh, no - please Fernandez, no!"
She screamed. Her brain was burning and would burn forever, the eternal combustion feeding on the oxygen of her pain. All her fears came back to her, all her doubts - her lack of faith, terror that not the afterlife awaited her but oblivion; fear of loneliness, abandonment; images of loved ones walking away from her, ignoring her screamed pleas for protection, affection and love.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the pain sluiced away, leaving only an echoing residue in her head, an ever-present but elusive spectre of all the agony and terror.
Great breaths wracking her body, aware that she'd vomited over herself, she gazed up at Forster. He was standing, staring down at her.
"Kill me!" she gasped.
He gestured to the guards. "Unshackle her. Take her away."
She closed her eyes in relief. Soon it would be over.
The guards unlocked the leg-iron and assisted her across the hangar. She found it hard to walk. The incapacitator had scrambled her co-ordination and she shambled from the building like an old woman. The sunlight was wonderfully soothing on her face. They followed Forster across the tarmac to the control tower.
It struck her in a second of panic that her father might never find out what had happened to her - or that, if he did, he might blame himself for her death. She wanted to tell him that it was not his fault that she had come