of him, he smiled with something like sympathy.
'I commanded your friend Branch for a time,' Sandwell said. 'It was in Bosnia, before
his accident, before he changed. He was a decent man.' He added, 'I doubt that changed.'
Ike agreed. Some things did not change.
'I heard about your troubles,' Sandwell said. 'I've read your file. You've served us well over the past three years. Everyone sings your praises. Tracker. Scout. Hunter-killer. Once Branch got you tamed, we've made good use of you. And you've made good use of us, gotten your pound of flesh back from Haddie, haven't you?'
Ike waited. Sandwell's 'us' gave an impression that he was still active with the military. But something about him – not his country laird's clothes, but something in his manner – suggested he had other meat on his plate, too.
Ike's silences were starting to annoy Sandwell. Ike could tell, because the next question was meant to put him on the spot. 'You were piloting slaves when Branch found you. Isn't that correct? You were a kapo. A warder. You were one of them.'
'Whatever you want to call it,' Ike said. It was like slapping a rock to accuse him of his past.
'Your answer matters. Did you cross over to the hadals, or didn't you?'
Sandwell was wrong. It didn't matter what Ike said. In his experience, people made their own judgments, regardless of the truth, even when the truth was clear.
'This is why people can never trust you recaptures,' Sandwell said. 'I've read enough psych evaluations. You're like twilight animals. You live between worlds, between light and darkness. No right or wrong. Mildly psychotic at best. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been folly for the military to rely on people like you in the field.'
Ike knew the fear and contempt. Precious few humans had been repossessed from hadal captivity, and most went straight into padded cells. A few dozen had been rehabbed and put to work, mostly as seeing-eye dogs for miners and religious colonies.
'I don't like you, is my point,' Sandwell continued. 'But I don't believe you went AWOL eighteen months ago. I read Branch's report of the siege at Albuquerque 10. I believe you went behind enemy lines. But it wasn't some grand act, to save your comrades in the camp. It was to kill the ones that did this to you.' Sandwell gestured at the markings and scars on Ike's face and hands. 'Hate makes sense to me.'
Since Sandwell appeared so satisfied, Ike did not contradict him. It was the automatic assumption that he led soldiers against his former captor for the revenge. Ike had quit trying to explain that to him the Army was a captor, too. Hate didn't enter the equation at all. It couldn't, or he would have destroyed himself long ago. Curiosity, that was his fire.
Unawares, Ike had edged from the creep of sunbeams. He saw Sandwell looking. Ike caught himself, stopped.
'You don't belong up here.' Sandwell smiled. 'I think you know that.'
This guy was a regular Welcome Wagon. 'I'll leave the minute they let me. I came to clear my name. Then it's back to work.'
'You sound like Branch. But it's not that simple, Ike. This is a hanging court. The hadal threat is over. They're gone.'
'Don't be so sure.'
'Everything is perception. People want the dragon to be slain. What that means is we don't have any more need for the misfits and rebels. We don't need the trouble and embarrassment and worry. You scare us. You look like them. We don't want the reminder. A year or two ago, the court would have considered your talents and value in the field. These days they want a tight ship. Discipline. Order.'
Sandwell kept the fascism casual. 'In short, you're dead. Don't take it personally. Yours isn't the only court-martial. The armies are about to purge the ranks of all the rawness and unpleasantry. You repos are finished. The scouts and guerrillas go. It
happens at the end of every war. Spring cleaning.'
Dixie cups. Branch's words echoed. He must have known about, or sensed, this coming purge. These were simple truths. But Ike was not ready to hear them. He felt hurt, and it was a revelation that he could feel anything at all.
'Branch talked you into throwing yourself on the mercy of the court,' Sandwell stated.
'What else did he tell you?' Ike felt as weightless as a dead leaf.
'Branch? We haven't spoken since Bosnia. I arranged this little discussion through one of my aides. Branch thinks you're meeting an attorney who's a friend of a friend. A fixer.'
Why the duplicity? Ike wondered.
'It takes no great stretch of the imagination,' Sandwell went on. 'Why else would you put yourself through this, if not for mercy? As I've said, it's beyond that. They've already decided your case.'
His tone – not derisive but unsentimental – told Ike there was no hope. He didn't waste time asking the verdict. He simply asked what the punishment was.
'Twelve years,' Sandwell said. 'Brig time. Leavenworth.'
Ike felt the sky coming to pieces overhead. Don't think, he warned himself. Don't feel. But the sun rose and strangled him with his own shadow. His dark image lay broken on the steps beneath him.
He was aware of Sandwell watching him patiently. 'You came here to see me bleed?'
he ventured.
'I came to give you a chance.' Sandwell handed him a business card. It bore the name Montgomery Shoat. There was no title or address. 'Call this man. He has work for you.'
'What kind of work?'
'Mr Shoat can tell you himself. The important thing is that it will take you deeper than the reach of any law. There are zones where extradition doesn't exist. They won't be able to touch you, down that far. But you need to act immediately.'
'You work for him?' Ike asked. Slow this thing down, he was telling himself. Find its footprints, backtrack a bit, get some origin. Sandwell gave nothing.
'I was asked to find someone with certain qualifications. It was pure luck to find you in such delicate straits.' That was information of a kind. It told him that Sandwell and Shoat were up to something illicit or oblique, or maybe just unhealthy, but something that needed the anonymity of a Sunday morning for its introduction.
'You've kept this from Branch,' Ike said. He didn't like that. It wasn't an issue of having Branch's permission, but of a promise. Running away would seal the Army out of his life forever.
Sandwell was unapologetic. 'You need to be careful,' he said. 'If you decide to do this, they'll mount a search for you. And the first people they'll interrogate are the ones closest to you. My advice: Don't compromise them. Don't call Branch. He's got enough problems.'
'I should just disappear?'
Sandwell smiled. 'You never really existed anyway,' he said.
There is nothing more powerful than this attraction toward an abyss.
– JULES VERNE, Journey to the Center of the Earth
7
THE MISSION
Manhattan
Ali entered in sandals and a sundress, as if they were a magic spell to hold back the winter. The guard ticked her name off a list and complained she was early and without her party, but passed her through the station. He gave some rapid-fire directions. Then she was alone, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to herself.
It was like being the last person on earth. Ali paused by a small Picasso. A vast Bierstadt Yellowstone. Then she came to a banner for the main exhibit declaring THE HARVEST OF HELL. The subtitle read 'Twice Reaped Art.' Devoted to artifacts of the underworld, most of the exhibit's objects had
