'Well, I can certainly see the appeal of this little arrangement for you. What I'm finding harder to grasp is why anyone else would agree to it.'
He spread his arms, a theatrical gesture playing to an audience of one. 'They believe in me, Jasmine. When Jim Jones told his followers to drink poison and feed it to their children, they did it gladly. Suicide bombers turned their own bodies into shrapnel, back in that wonderful world we all remember before the Cull. People will do anything if they only believe, and I'm asking them for so much less than that.'
'No,' I said, 'not so many, not that.' And then, clear and unpleasant, I saw the whole picture. 'But if you gave them a watered down version of the poison you gave the people of Cuba – then they might agree. Tell me, Ash, just what is in those pills your travelling circus is handing out like sweets?'
He smiled, almost pleased that I'd understood. 'Only a little something to make them more… open to suggestion. I learnt from my mistakes in Cuba. The latest version doesn't leave any lasting damage.'
'I don't think Haru would agree with you.' For a moment I let myself imagine him and the terrible thing that might already have been done to him, all because he'd been foolish enough to listen to me.
'Your companion?' He shrugged. 'In time he'll come to understand. That's the other thing I've found. Take someone's freedom, mutilate and brutalise them, and if you offer them a way to keep their pride, to tell themselves that it was all for a purpose, they'll take it. Humans have always lived a delusional life. I'm just giving them a different dream.' He paused a moment, and when he carried on his tone was more fervent, almost fevered. I could hear the Voice, resonating through every syllable. 'An incomplete dream, until now. But with you…'
'I won't join you. I don't believe, and I never will.'
He shook his head. 'You misunderstand. I don't need your co-operation, not in the way you mean. Your value lies elsewhere – in the Cure you're also carrying. All these children I've fathered with my wives here are only half- breeds. But our children, Jasmine – they could be the first of a new race.'
I shook my head, horrified. The friend I'd once known had taken my rejection and accepted it. This Ash, the servant of the crazy Voice that I knew all too well, would never take no for an answer. I backed away, hands held out in front of me to push him away.
His own lashed out, fast as a striking snake, and grasped my wrist. I tried to twist away, to break his grip but he was too strong for me. Stronger than any human should be. I didn't stop struggling though, because this was something I would never surrender to. The balcony was a hundred feet above the city. I could throw myself over it, maybe even take him with me. Anything, anything, to stop this happening.
Another step, and now I felt other arms pin me, holding me immobile.
'No,' Ashok said. 'No, Jasmine, I would never do that to you.'
I looked him in the eye, but there was no human compassion there. For the first time I accepted that every last trace of my friend was gone. 'Yes you would.'
'Then let me rephrase. I don't need to do that. I have something else entirely in mind.' He nodded at the women behind me and they began to drag me towards the door of the suite. I dug my heels into the thick carpet, resisting with everything that was left in me, but it was futile. They had some of Ash's crazy strength about them. I wondered if it came from the warped new life growing deep inside them.
After five minutes, I gave up the struggle. All I was doing was wearing myself out. I needed to keep my strength for whatever came next – wherever they were taking me. I knew, of course I did, that resistance would be as futile then as it was now, but I needed to cling on to a fragment of hope.
They took me from the top of the casino down to its basement, a vast room that must have run the full length of the building. The light there was neon bright and flat. I thought it might once have been the kitchen but the only remnants of its old use were the long silver tables which lined it from wall to wall. The meat which lay on them was still living, but unconscious. There must have been a hundred of them, maybe two hundred. All women, all attached to drips and heart monitors. All naked. None of them was older than thirty. The youngest might have been sixteen.
'They're brain dead,' Ash said. 'It was easier that way.'
'Are these the people who wouldn't believe?' I asked, sickened. Was this what lay in store for me? My mind gone, just a body to lie here for Ash to use as he wanted. A part of me thought that might not be such a terrible end, if it meant that I could finally rest.
There were more men here, doctors. One of them approached us now, a syringe in his hand. With my arms still pinned behind my back I was entirely powerless.
'I wouldn't force myself on you,' Ash said. 'That way we could only make one baby every nine months. Inside you, you have the seeds of far, far more than that. All I need to do is harvest them and plant them somewhere else.'
I looked at him, then at the rows and rows of comatose women. They were nothing but bodies now – just fertile ground. 'No, Ash,' I said. 'Don't do this.' But I knew that there was no chance he wouldn't. He nodded to the doctor and the man reached out, hand almost gentle as he lifted my t-shirt up.
The needle hurt like hell as it went in.
'Just some hormones,' Ash told me. 'We need you to hyper-ovulate before we harvest. Ten or twenty times and we should have enough.'
'You'll kill me if you do that.'
'Maybe, but by then you'll have given me everything I need.' Then he turned away, as if I was no longer of very much interest to him.
Ingo was waiting in the room they took me to, one of the suites on the upper floors, smaller than Ash's penthouse but still plush and a little gaudy. I tensed when I saw him there, wondering what task of Ash's he was here to perform. He looked almost tentative and there didn't seem to be anything worse he could do to me. The hormones were already racing through my system, flushing my face and speeding my heart. The Voice was louder too, more and more difficult to ignore. They'd taken my anti-psychotics along with my gun. Maybe I should be glad that by the time they tore the ova out of my body I'd probably be a willing victim.
The guard pushed me into the room and then it was just me and Ingo now. I thought briefly about trying to overpower him, but what was the point? I ignored him instead, moving to sit on the long sofa at one end of the room. I stared at the large blank screen of the television but it had nothing to tell me. Ingo didn't move, didn't say anything. Eventually I gave up and turned to look at him.
'Why?' I asked him. 'Why would you let him do that to you?'
'Take away my manhood, is that what you mean?' His eyes were wide, face as open and guileless as ever.
'Yes,' I said, though I meant more than that. I'd liked Ingo. I wanted to believe that he'd once been a person who wouldn't let the things happen which happened here. Why had he let Ash change him into someone who would?
'The priests of Isis, in ancient Rome, would cut off their own genitals with a scythe in honour of their goddess,' he told me.
'Ash isn't a god, Ingo. He isn't even really a man anymore.'
'I do not worship him, is that what you think? It is his ideas that have drawn me, right from the start.'
'To make everyone in the world as crazy as he is? As master-plans go, I'd say it's one of the more deranged.'
'Yes, I know that you believe this. But this is because you grew up in that one small corner of the world where reason ruled. I have seen the look in Westerners faces in this world after the Cull. They cannot believe that it has come to this – that mankind can behave in this way.
'Look in the face of an African and you will see that they cannot believe that humanity could ever behave in any other way. I told you about my country and I think you felt some pity, but there is a part of you which will never really understand. I was five when I saw my first murder. Seven when they raped my sister in front of me. My father they killed, a bayonet to the belly so that it would be slow. I worked in the mines for four years, my lungs full of rock dust. It is there, still, murdering me too. I will not live another ten years. I saw children kill each other for scraps of food.
'Someone once asked, 'Where was God at Auschwitz?' and the rabbi replied, 'Where was man?' Where was man in the Congo? Where was God? The Cull was cleaner than what my people did to each other, as casually as swatting flies.'
'I know I can't understand,' I told him. 'You've experienced terrible things – but why do you want to take a
