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multilevel factory. During the tour I catch Kevlar giving me a sad look, like
he's got a lot of pity for me. Makes me nervous. Finally I ask, "What's up?
You've been giving me the weirdest look. You checking me out or something?"
"Yeah, you're a total stud, Mouse. I can hardly control myself." He laughs.
I smile back, but looking at the curves of his avatar's female body, I can't
decide if he's serious.
"Don't flatter yourself," Kevlar says. "I was just thinking about what you
said, man. About Morningstar. About how you're going to get away from him."
I turn back to closely examine the chemical code-writing feature Kevlar was
showing me. "What about it? After this thing with the Inquisitor is over, I'm
gone."
"Yeah, okay."
Kevlar sounds so unconvinced, it's easy to guess what he's thinking. "You
figure I'm fooling myself."
"The guy is the Dark Prince."
I laugh. "Yeah. But, Emmaline's the one that banged me up."
"Well," Kevlar says. "I'm not saying you shouldn't be scared of her. She's the
Antichrist."
I start to laugh, but Kevlar doesn't join me. "What, you're not serious, are
you?"
"Dude, you help her rein in her Page program, and it's, like, Rapture time."
I blank out the machine's interface. The image of the factory-industrial-gray
walls melt into white space. "Rapture."
Kevlar nods. "Rapture. Tribulation. Apocalypse."
"First of all, Kevlar, my man, you have got to stop with the heavy drug use.
You're seriously whacked. Second, I'm a Muslim. That's not how it's going to
work for me."
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Kevlar looks hurt. "Fine. But don't tell me later that I didn't try to warn
you."
"Okay," I say, reinitiating the interface. "Thanks for the heads-up, crazy
man."
Pain brings me up out of the sequencer. With every breath I feel like I'm
being stabbed with a hot poker. I can't concentrate and have to disable my
connection. Someone has turned on a desk lamp, and I squint. My eyes water;
I'm coming down.
Beside me Kevlar removes his connection and gets up to go looking for a hit of
another kind. I try not to look interested as he hunts through the trash in
his apartment for his next hit. Breathing is painful, but I'd rather hurt than
be hooked.
Emmaline meanwhile is taking up valuable bed space, passed out again.
Morningstar sits at the edge of the rumpled covers like a faithful watchdog.
His hand strokes the leather of her boot. Looking at Morningstar's attentive
form bowed toward her, I try to see Kevlar's devil in him.
It's not as hard as I'd like.
My guts have been in a knot since I first saw those two together. Every part
of me has been screaming, Run. True, I'm not usually the sort to go in for any
kind of supernatural mumbo-jumbo. But then, I'm also used to being able to
trust my intuition. If I'd done that at the start, I wouldn't be sitting here
now looking at a man and seeing the devil.
Out of the corner of my eye I sense the black angel again. I turn to try to
get a better look, and only shadows cast by a radiator, cobwebs, and rain
greet me. Morningstar looks up. Amber, like fire, like a snake's eyes,
reflects in his chestnut-brown eyes.
"Hey, Prince of Darkness. You want to order some takeaway or something? I'm
starving."
"You go ahead," he says, returning his attention to the Inquisitor. "I'm
good."
"You're good," I say. "Huh. Yeah. That's kind of ironic, eh?" When he looks
back at me again, I find my mouth continuing without the go-ahead from my
brain: "I mean, you. Good. Kind of funny, don't you think?"
Finally I'm able to stop talking.
Morningstar trains a wickedly arched eyebrow on me, but otherwise only looks
at me like he wonders what the point of that diatribe was. So do I. I guess
I'm still hoping he'll deny it, ask me what the hell I'm talking about, why I
called him the Prince of Darkness. Instead he drops the eyebrow and gives me a
kind of sad look. "I'm sorry about the drugs," he says. "Emmaline only meant
to push you. The AI took over her motor controls. We couldn't take you to the
hospital, you understand."
"Yeah, I guess not," I say. I look away from him, not knowing what to do with
the devil's sympathy. I stare, instead, at the ratty blanket covering the
window. "I take it the Gnostics are wrong. You're not the god of the
creation."
"No, definitely not."
"Great." I say, "That's just fucking great." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]