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The smile that crossed John’s lips was brief but pleased. “That’s right. He developed something very important. Maybe the most important thing in the last couple of thousand years.”

“Wow.” Aaron paused. “Will he tell us?”

“He doesn’t need to. I already have it.”

“Then why do we need him?”

“Partly so he can’t tell anyone else. And partly because I want to see what happens to him.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“He’s going to die.”

“Oh.”

John looked up then. He was different from most grown-ups, who only really looked at the kids when they were mad. That was one of the things Aaron loved about him, that John saw him, looked at him and talked to him like he mattered, not like he was just another kid, another war orphan whose mom had—

Stop.

“You okay?”

Aaron shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Why is he going to die?”

“He’s too old.”

“He didn’t look that old.”

John seemed to be about to say something, then didn’t. Instead he patted the bench beside him. Aaron sat down.

“You know, your mom was very proud of you.”

I know, was what he wanted to say, but when he opened his mouth he realized he couldn’t trust himself, and so he didn’t say anything, just looked at his boots. Don’t cry, don’t cry, you little pussy, don’t you cry.

There was the sound of a lighter, and then the sharp smell of smoke. John said, “Wanna know a secret?”

Hawk looked up, nodded, faster than he meant to.

“We’re about to win.”

“We are? Because of Dr. Couzen?”

John Smith took a deep drag off his cigarette. “Partly. He’s the last piece of a plan I’ve been working on for a very long time. A plan that changes everything.”

“What is it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m pretty smart.”

“I know, Hawk.” John’s voice sounded almost hurt. “I know that.”

“I mean, of course I’m just a normal. I wish I weren’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it. But I’d do anything for . . .” Aaron caught himself just before he said you, amended it to “. . . the cause.” Then he wondered if he’d caught himself in time after all, because the way his friend was looking at him had changed. “What?”

For a long moment, John just stared at him, the cigarette held almost to his lips but not quite.

As if he’d forgotten it was there.

CHAPTER 13

Soren stared.

His cage was made of metal tiles eighteen inches across. Six squares high, six wide, and ten long. The floor was concrete. A metal door replaced exactly ten tiles.

Each tile was enameled glossy white and pierced by a lattice of pinholes, which were the only source of light. A constant pale illumination glowed behind them, never dimming or brightening. The only change occurred when gas flowed through the holes from all directions at once, and he would find himself in a sudden swirling mist, like flying through a sunlit cloud.

When that happened there was little choice but to breathe steadily and wait.

Twice each day a tray with a sludgy soup of proteins and amino acids slid through a slot in the door. The tray was attached, and the only eating utensil was a wide paper straw. A plastic toilet fixed to the floor took his waste. Doubtless he was being watched, his vitals recorded by sensitive instruments hidden behind the metal tiles.

The first occasion the gas had flowed was after he had refused food several times in succession. He’d awakened on his bunk (two tiles wide by four long), still naked, a raped feeling in his throat from the scrape of the tube they must have used to feed him. In several other instances, he had clearly been bathed. On one memorable recent occasion, slight chafing around wrists and ankles suggested that he had been strapped down while unconscious, and so perhaps taken somewhere, although there was no way to be sure.

Soren had sought nothingness most of his life. But a blank and unchanging cage was not nothingness. It was his curse made physical. An ocean of time to drown in. No books, no window, no visitors, not even a spider that he might become. His memories were largely not a place to retreat. There had been a few moments of true contentment or even happiness, and he treasured them, striving to recall every detail of a chess game with John, or the way sunlight shadowed the soft hollow of Samantha’s neck. But the mental movies had been screened so many times the colors were fading, and he feared losing them altogether. He could exercise, and meditate, and masturbate, but that left the bulk of the hours untouched.

So he counted.

The sum could be calculated: the pinholes were in offset rows of 48, totaling 2,304 holes per tile. 182 tiles meant 419,328 holes. Minus the 3,456 blocked by his bunk, that left 415,872 holes.

The number itself held no meaning. Its purpose was to provide a benchmark. A way to recognize that he had erred, had missed a pinhole or double-counted one. At which point it was time to return to the beginning. Like Sisyphus, endlessly rolling his boulder up a mountain in Tartarus, endlessly losing it, endlessly beginning again.