Evensong

Ironically, the shuto strike which broke his opponent’s collarbone had been a good one, well-executed and with just the right weight. He remembered the feel of the collarbone shearing—not shattering, but shearing cleanly—under the edge of his hand. His hands and feet, and elbows and knees, and any other striking surfaces of his body, could— if he willed them to—become strengthened locally at the molecular level at the point of impact, acquiring the density of close-grain hardwood. Most of his abilities were powered by enhanced organic processes, not by metal or machinery or electronics.

So, a good shuto strike: if he’d got it wrong, it would have continued through his opponent’s body and out at the shoulder-blade. But it was the result of an earlier mistake. And it left him with a lousy Tournament time. Which in turn left him with a mission involving mere bodyguard duties.

Except that this time, there was something different.

He gestured, and another immersion hologram, one he’d programmed himself, replaced his living room: the reception at Fallingwater. The colours and textures always relaxed him, and he needed relaxing. There was something ominous about this mission…No, not now. Later.

5

When Levin woke the reception room was still there. So was the Fallingwater decor. It wasn’t a hologram, he decided. The textures and colours, the weave of the stone-white fabric covering the sofas, seemed too tangible. No quivering round the edges. A real replica. And—the architect part of him kicked in automatically—not of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original, but larger. Scaled up, like Rafiq’s house. And the eight who’d been waiting for him (eight, not nine; the other one had gone) were lounging among the groups of sofas like Rafiq’s staff had been lounging when he’d last been at the real Fallingwater. No, the real replica Fallingwater. So this wasn’t a hologram, but a genuine replica, of Rafiq’s original replica. His head hurt, not because of any violence done to him, but with the strain of following his own thoughts.

He remembered that Anwar liked this interior. He, Levin, didn’t particularly: he thought interiors should be one thing or the other, either grandiose or minimalist, and this was neither.

He was sitting in one of the impeccable Frank Lloyd Wright armchairs. He had no choice. His wrists and ankles were tied. Also his forearms. Also his thighs. Also his torso. And his neck. The fact of being restrained neither surprised nor disturbed him, but the fact that he’d been restrained with monofilament disturbed him very much. As did the fact that even if it hadn’t been monofilament—even if it had been something he could break or loosen, like industrial cable or steel hawsers—whoever had tied it had done so with an obvious knowledge of how he might try to break free. There were blocks and local strengthenings in all the right places.

This seemed an incongruous place for torture—a cellar, though rather obvious, was the usual preferred location—but the prospect of torture didn’t disturb him. He could shut out his pain receptors, even wind down to death if irreparably damaged.

One of the eight people lounging on the sofas turned to him.“We know you have in built defences against torture.You won’t need them. We have no plans to torture you.”

After which they continued conversing among themselves.

It wasn’t acting. They were genuinely behaving as if he wasn’t there. Two of them got up and walked past him, and he caught a snatch of their conversation.

“A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.” “No. A thousand maybe, but not a hundred.”

The ease of their manner, as before. Talking to each other as if he wasn’t there. These people can’t be involved with someone like Marek. The conversation of the two sitting closest to him gradually resolved itself above the murmur of the other conversations, none of which seemed to have anything to do with him.

“My talk at the Johnsonian Society. Are you still coming?” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. What title did you finally decide?”

“‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’”

“Hmm.”

“Yes, I know. Pretentious. It needs something to liven it up, maybe a witty opening. Something like ‘What happened to the I in Identity?’”

“Hmm…How about this? A man invents time travel. He goes forward to a minute after his death, so he can have sex with his own corpse.”

“Why only a minute?”

“So he’d still be warm. You could leave that bit out if you want, but the rest of it addresses your theme about the self-referential nature of Identity.”

“Self-referential, yes. And the time-travel motif gives it a dimension of circularity.”

“Literally a dimension.”

One of the others detached himself from a group of two or three and strolled over to Levin.