Glasshouse - Charles Stross [78]
“Sam.”
He glances up from his bowl. “Yes?”
“Today. Don’t be surprised if—if—” I can’t say it.
He puts his spoon down and looks out the window. “It’s a nice day.” He frowns. “What’s bugging you? Is it Church?”
I manage to nod.
His eyes go glassy for a moment. Checking his scores, I guess. Then he nods. “You didn’t get any penalties, did you?”
“No. But I’m afraid I—” I shake my head, unable to continue.
“They’re going to single you out,” he says, evenly and slowly.
“That’s it.” I nod. “I’ve just got a feeling, is all.”
“Let them.” He looks angry, and for a moment I feel frightened, then I realize that for a wonder it isn’t me—he’s angry at the idea that Fiore might have a go at me in Church, indignant at the possibility that the congregation might go along with it. Resentful. “We’ll walk out.”
“No, Sam.” The water is boiling—I check the clock, then switch on the toaster. Boiled eggs and toast, that’s how far my culinary skills have come. “If you do that, it’ll make you a target, too. If we’re both targets . . .”
“I don’t care.” He meets my gaze evenly, with no sign of the reticence that’s been dogging him for the past month. “I made a decision. I’m not going to stand by and let them pick us off one by one. We’ve both made mistakes, but you’re the one who’s most at risk in here. I haven’t been fair to you and I, I”—he stumbles for a moment—“I wish things had turned out differently.” He looks down at his bowl and murmurs something I can’t quite make out.
“Sam?” I sit down. “Sam. You can’t take on the whole polity on your own.” He looks sad. Sad? Why?
“I know.” He looks at me. “But I feel so helpless!”
Sad and angry. I stand up and walk over to the burner, turn the heat right down. The eggs are bumping against the bottom of the pan. The toaster is ticking. “We should have thought of that before we agreed to be locked up in this prison,” I say. I feel like screaming. With my extra-heavy memory erasure—which I have a sneaking suspicion exceeded anything my earlier self, the one who wrote me the letter and then forgot about it, was expecting—I’m half-surprised I got here in the first place. Certainly if I’d known Kay was going to dither, then pull out, I’d probably have chosen to stay with her and the good life, assassins or no.
“Prison.” He chuckles bitterly. “That’s a good description for it. I wish there was some way to escape.”
“Go ask the Bishop; maybe he’ll let you out early for bad behavior.” I pop the toast, butter it, then scoop both eggs out of the water and onto my plate. “I wish.”
“How about we walk to Church today?” Sam suggests hesitantly, as I’m finishing breakfast. “It’s about two kilometers. That sounds a long way, but—”
“It also sounds like a good idea to me,” I say, before he can talk himself out of it. “I’ll wear my work shoes.”
“Good. I’ll meet you down here in ten minutes.” He brushes against me on his way out of the kitchen, and I startle, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Something’s going on inside his head, and not being able to open up and ask is frustrating.
Two kilometers is a nice morning walk, and Sam lets me hold his hand as we stroll along the quiet avenues beneath trees suddenly exploding with green and blue-black leaves. We have to walk through three tunnels between zones to get to the neighborhood of the Church—there are no lines of sight longer than half a kilometer, perhaps because that would make it obvious that