Part 38 (2/2)
”You want me to get you out somehow? Carry your thoughts.”
”Near enough.”
”Can't I simply act for you?” she said. ”Be your agent? I'm good out there.”
”I'm sure you are.”
”You brief me, I'll do what it takes.”
Kissoon shook his head. ”There's so much you don't know,” he said. ”So vast a picture, I haven't even tried to unveil. I doubt your imagination could cope with it.”
”Try me,” she said.
”Are you sure?”
”I'm sure.”
”Well, the issue here isn't simply the Jaff. He may taint Quiddity, but it'll survive.”
”So what's the big problem?” Tesla said. ”You give me all this s.h.i.+t about needing sacrifice. What for? If Quiddity can look after itself, what for?”
”Will you not simply trust me?”
She looked hard at him. The fire had sunk low but her eyes were by now well used to the amber gloom. Part of her wanted very much to put her trust in someone. But she'd spent most of her adult life learning the danger of that. Men, agents, studio executives, so many of-them had asked her for her trust in the past, and she'd given it, and been f.u.c.ked over. It was too late to learn a new way now. She was cynical to the marrow. If she ever stopped being that she'd stop being Tesla, and she liked being Tesla. It therefore followed-as night, day-that cynicism suited her too.
So she said: ”No. I'm sorry. I can't trust you. Don't take it personally. I'd be the same whoever you were. I want to know the bottom line.”
”What does that mean?”
”I want the truth. Or I don't give you anything.”
”Are you so sure you can refuse?” Kissoon said.
She half turned her face from him, glancing back, tight-lipped, the way her favorite heroines did, with a look of accusation.
”That was a threat,” she said.
”You could construe it that way,” he observed.
”Well, f.u.c.k you-”
He shrugged. His pa.s.sivity-the almost lazy way he regarded her-inflamed her further.
”I don't have to sit and listen to this, you know!”
”No?”
”No! You're hiding something from me.”
”Now you're being ridiculous.”
”I don't think so.”
She stood up. His eyes didn't follow her face, but lingered at groin height. She was suddenly uncomfortable being naked in his presence. She wanted the clothes that were presumably still back at the Mission, stale and b.l.o.o.d.y as they'd be. If she was to get back there, she'd better start walking. She turned to the door.
Behind her, Kissoon said: ”Wait, Tesla. Please wait. The error's mine. I concede; the error's mine. Come back, will you?”
His tone was placating, but she read a less benign undertow. He's riled, she thought; for all his spiritual poise, he's p.i.s.sed. It was a lesson in the facilities of dialogue to hear the bristle beneath the purr. She turned back to hear more, no longer certain that she could get the truth from this man. She only had to be threatened once to doubt.
”Go on,” she said.
”You won't sit?”
”That's right,” she said. She had to pretend she wasn't afraid, though suddenly she was; had to think of her skin as fas.h.i.+on enough. Stand, and be defiantly naked. ”I won't sit.”
”Then I'll try to explain as quickly as I can,” he said. He'd effectively smoothed out every ambiguity in his manner. He was considerate; even humble.
”Even I, you must understand, don't have all the facts at my disposal,” he said. ”But I have enough, I hope, to convince you of the danger we're in.”
”Who's we?”
”The inhabitants of the Cosm.”
”Again?”
”Fletcher didn't explain this to you?”
”No.”
He sighed.
”Think of Quiddity as a sea,” he said.
”I'm thinking...”
”On one side of that sea is the reality we inhabit. A continent of being, if you like, the perimeters of which are sleep and death.”
”So far, so good.”
”Now...suppose there's another continent, on the other side of the sea.”
”Another reality.”
”Yes. As vast and complex as our own. As full of energies and species and appet.i.tes. But dominated, as the Cosm is, by one species in particular, with strange appet.i.tes.”
”I don't like the sound of this.”
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