The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [107]
“I suppose you didn’t bother to ask her which war she was trying to prevent?” Michael Lowenthal put in.
“I made a few suggestions,” I retorted, “but she didn’t react to any of them. She said things were more complicated than Earth versus the Outer System. I believed her — but I’m in no position to guess how complicated things might really be. That’s your province.”
He wouldn’t play. “I agree with Niamh and Mortimer,” he said, stubbornly. “No one wants a war. No one would be so foolish as to start one.”
I shrugged my shoulders theatrically. “I guess we’ll have to wait until they decide to tell us who they are and what they’re up to,” I said. “But there is one more thing we ought to consider.”
“What?” said Niamh Horne, bluntly.
“I was involved in a kidnap once before,” I said. “Fortunately, I wasn’t the one kidnapped — but I remember it as if it were yesterday. They flushed his IT just as they’ve flushed ours. They did it because they wanted to interrogate him. Personally, I don’t have any information that anyone nowadays would want to extract by force — but if I had, I’d be a little nervous. If any one of you does have any valuable secrets tucked away in your head, I wouldn’t rely on being able to keep them secret for long.”
I could tell that Michael Lowenthal had already thought about the possibility. Niamh Horne was still expressionless. Davida still seemed to be so terrified that she could hardly speak. Solantha Handsel was the only one who looked mortally offended by the suggestion, and it was she who said: “They flushed yours too. Are you so certain that you haven’t got anything they might want to know?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m also certain that if there was anything they wanted to know, I wouldn’t try to hold out on them. In my experience, though — and I really do have experience — torturers never settle for what you tell them straight away, even when it’s the truth.”
Maybe it was a seed that would have been better left unsown. Maybe it was what provoked our careful hosts to make their next move. If so, they might have done better to resist the provocation.
The biggest of the wallscreens flickered into life, and Alice’s face appeared. “If Mr. Tamlin would care to make his way to the same door as before,” she said, a trifle impatiently, “and the rest of you would please stand clear, I can now give him something that will further reduce his pain and help his injuries heal.”
In a different context, it wouldn’t have sounded ominous at all. In view of what I’d just been saying, nobody was about to take the offer entirely at face value — but I was the only one who knew how much I could have told the others and hadn’t, so I was perfectly prepared to play along.
“Sure,” I said, rising to my feet without the slightest hesitation. “Whatever you’ve found, it has to be better than codeine. I’m on my way.”
I didn’t know what to expect as I walked towards the door, while my companions obediently held back, but I was looking forward to another opportunity to talk to Alice. I didn’t suppose that she’d answer my questions any less guardedly than before, but I figured that the mere fact of my having a second session closeted away with her would increase my advantage over my fellow prisoners. Even if I couldn’t contrive actually to become an officially designated go-between, I figured, I could at least pretend.
Like a fool, I was too busy formulating my own grand plan to anticipate what actually happened next.
I had reached the threshold and was just about to cross over into the waiting darkness, when I was struck down from behind. I was shoved hard, and cleverly, so that I went down face first, sprawling across the open doorway.
If I’d had even half a second’s warning I’d have been able to get my hands spread, in such a way as to prevent my nose coming into contact with the floor, but I didn’t. Once I’d actually been hit, mere reflexes weren