stepping over the body of the man, who was groaning and beginning to struggle to get up. He wound down the stairwell to the room below.
They were almost all there, almost the whole community, the whole hive, gathered in the common room at the bottom of the stairs, though they drew back as he came near, as if afraid to be touched by him. He came down to the last step and stood there, holding the cooler in his arms, waiting. It was only after a moment that he became conscious of how many of them were armed, of how many weapons were pointing at him.
“Rasmus?” he shouted. “I’ve come to report.”
The members of the crowd murmured briefly to one another and then fell silent. For a moment nothing happened. He was about to repeat himself when a door in the back of the room opened and out came Rasmus.
He was flanked by Olaf and Oleg, their hoods off but the hazard suits still on.
“You see,” said Olaf, when he saw Horkai. “We told you.”
“And so you did,” said Rasmus. “Hello, Josef. I must admit we weren’t expecting you. And walking, too.”
“I’ve come to report,” he said again.
“A little late, aren’t you? We’d written you off as either dead or a turncoat quite some time ago.”
“I have something for you,” said Horkai.
“Oh?” said Rasmus. “And what might that be?”
He shook the cooler. “This,” he said. He opened the cooler’s lid and tilted it so they could see the cylinder inside. “Mission accomplished.”
Briefly Rasmus looked dumbfounded, his composure lost for the first time that Horkai could remember. But after a moment he gathered himself again, his face taking on its mask of benign indifference. Then he smiled.
“Well done, Josef,” he said. “Why don’t you come into my office and we’ll talk about how best to reward you.”
IT WAS UNCANNILY LIKE HIS first visit to Rasmus’s office so many months before, the only difference being that instead of them easing him into a chair, he was on his feet and could walk to a chair and sit on his own. He instinctively took the chair he’d sat in before, the one behind the desk. Rasmus hesitated a moment, almost said something, then went to sit in the central chair of the three facing the desk, Oleg and Olaf flanking him.
“Comfortable?” Rasmus asked, an edge to his voice.
Horkai nodded. “Good enough for now,” he said.
He sat there with the cooler on his lap, Rasmus staring expectantly at him.
“Well?” he said. “You wanted to report. Go ahead and report.”
“I have something for you,” said Horkai. “I’m going to give it to you and then I’ll consider our bargain complete. And then I want you to leave me alone.”
“If it’s really what we want,” said Rasmus, “I imagine we might be able to accommodate you.”
Horkai nodded once and put the cooler on the desk. He pushed it toward the trio of men until Rasmus bent forward and took it.
He opened the cooler, looked at the cylinder again.
“It wouldn’t survive unfrozen this long,” said Rasmus.
“It’s been frozen,” said Horkai. “I’ve kept it frozen until now. Though it’s probably starting to thaw.”
Rasmus reached out and prodded it, quickly yanked his finger away. He closed the lid, handed the cooler to Olaf, whispered in his ear. Olaf nodded sharply, then stood up and left, Oleg following him out.
“They’ll handle it,” said Rasmus. “We’ll get to work immediately, make sure everything is in order. If it is, we can’t thank you enough.”
“And if it’s not?”
Rasmus shrugged. “Then we still have a problem. We’ll still need your help.”
Horkai shook his head. “I’m done helping,” he said.
“Oh?” said Rasmus. “Then why come back at all?”
“To make a good-faith effort to finish what I agreed to do, to tell you that Qanik and Qatik were faithful to their purpose, and to warn you from now on to leave me alone.”
Rasmus nodded. “You’ve been talking to that other one,” he said. “The one who won’t give his name. What sort of craziness has he been pumping into your head?”
“It’s my decision,” said Horkai. “It’s not him, it’s me.”
“Josef,” he said. “We found you. My father found you. We stored you for years, sometimes diverting power sorely needed for other things to keep you alive. Despite your difference, we made you part of our community —”
“—your hive,” he interrupted.
“Yes,” said Rasmus, “sometimes we call it a hive. What does that matter? What matters is that we took you in and looked out for you and made you one of us. And now you intend to leave us without repaying us for your kindness?”
“Did that kindness include lying to me about an illness and then crippling me?”
“I told you before, anything I knew about you, I had from my father. I only know what he told me, which was what you had told him. If you don’t believe it, that’s your business—you’re the only one who will suffer the consequences.”
“Why did you lie to me about what was in the cylinder?”
“I didn’t lie to you,” said Rasmus. “I told you as much as you needed to know, enough to make you do what, if you could think of yourself as a proper member of the community, you should have done in any case.”
“I’m willing to bet that the cylinder was never stolen from you. That the only time this cylinder was ever stolen was when I stole it.”
“I have dozens of lives on my hands to worry about. I have the continuation of a community to attend to, Josef. Even more than that: the continuation of a species. What does it matter, next to that, if you weren’t told things in a way that you could clearly understand them? What does it matter, next to that, if the factuality of certain things was, let us say, questionable?”
“You’re a bastard,” said Horkai.
“No need for name calling,” said Rasmus.
“I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain,” said Horkai. “Now I wash my hands of you.”
“Let’s wait and see,” said Rasmus.
“No,” said Horkai. “I’m leaving.” He stood and started for the door.
“I still have something you want,” said Ramsus.
Horkai stopped, his hand on the knob. “And what might that be?” he asked.
“Knowledge,” said Rasmus. “Answers.”
And perhaps, of everything, perhaps this was what Horkai regretted most. That upon hearing these words, he turned and returned to his seat instead of going out the door and up the stairs and leaving forever.
29
“ASK ME ANYTHING,” SAID RASMUS. “Anything you want. I’ll answer your questions honestly.”
“Why should I believe you?” asked Horkai.
“Because you don’t have any other choice,” said Rasmus. “The only person who possibly has answers to your questions is sitting here before you. Either you listen to him or you don’t.”
Horkai hesitated, finally nodded. “All right,” he said. “What was I before the Kollaps?”
“Truly? Nobody knows. My father found you, just as I said, dragged you to safety, nursed you back to health. You never spoke of who you were before or of what you’d done, but whether because then, as now, you had holes in your memory or because you simply didn’t want to talk about it, who can say? My father claimed that most everybody was like that in those early days. That everyone had lost enough that you knew better than to talk about it.”
