Torch of Freedom

Chapter Thirty

'It's getting harder, Jack.' Herlander Simões leaned back in the visitor's chair in Jack McBryde's kitchen and shook his head. 'You'd think it would either stop hurting, or that I'd get used to it, or that I'd just go ahead and give up.' He bared his teeth in a bitter mockery of a smile. 'I always used to think I was a fairly smart fellow, but obviously I was wrong. If I really were so damned smart, I'd have managed to do one of those things by now!'

'I wish I could tell you some magic formula, Herlander.' McBryde flicked the top off another bottle of beer and slid it across to his guest. 'And, I'll be honest with you, there are times I just want to kick you right in the ass.' There was at least a little humor in his own smile, and he shook his head. 'I don't know whether I'm more pissed off with you for the way you keep right on putting yourself through this or for the way it's twisting up your entire life, not just your work.'

'I know.'

Simões accepted the new beer and took a long pull from the bottle. Then he set it down on the table top, folding his hands around it so that his thumbs and forefingers were a loose circle about the base. He stared down at his cuticles for several seconds, his worn face set in a pensive expression.

'I know,' he repeated, looking up at McBryde at last. 'I've been trying to get past my own anger, the way you suggested. Sometimes, I think I'm making progress, too. But something always seems to come along.'

'Are you still watching those holos at night?' McBryde's voice had gone very gentle, and Simões' shoulders seemed to hunch without actually moving a millimeter. He looked back down at the beer bottle, his hazel eyes like shutters, and nodded once.

'Herlander,' McBryde said softly. Simões looked up at him, and McBryde shook his own head. 'You're just killing yourself doing that. You know it as well as I do.'

'Maybe.' Simões inhaled deeply. 'No, not maybe—yes. I know it. You know it. For that matter, my official therapist knows it. But I just . . . can't, Jack. It's like as long as I look at the HD every so often she isn't really gone.'

'But she is gone, Herlander.' McBryde's voice was as merciless as it was gentle. 'And so is Harriet. And so is your entire damned life, if this succeeds in sucking you down.'

'Sometimes I think that might not be such a bad thing,' Simões admitted quietly.

'Herlander!' This time McBryde's voice was sharp, and Simões looked up again.

It was odd, McBryde thought, as their eyes met. Under normal circumstances, having one of the scientists whose security he was responsible for overseeing as a guest in his apartment—as someone who had turned into something remarkably like a personal friend—would have broken every rule of the Alignment's security services. In fact, it did break every one of them . . . except for the fact that Isabel Bardasano's personal orders were still in effect.

He'd had his reservations when he first received those orders, and in some ways, he had even more reservations now. For one thing, his relationship with Simões really had turned into something which truly did resemble friendship, and he knew that hadn't been a good thing, in oh so many ways. Turning someone who was a solid mass of emotional anguish into a friend was one of the best recipes for destroying one's own peace of mind he could think of. Empathizing with what had been done to Herlander Simões and his daughter was even worse, given what it did to his own anger quotient . . . and the mental byroads it had been leading him along. And leaving all of that aside, he was only too well aware that his objectivity—the professional objectivity it was his sworn duty to maintain where Simões was concerned—had been completely destroyed. What had begun as obedience to orders, as a mere dutiful effort to keep an important scientific asset functional, had segued into something very different.

Simões was equally aware of that. It was odd, but in some ways the fact that McBryde had begun from a purely pragmatic effort to salvage Simões' utility to the Gamma Center had actually made it easier for the hyper-physicist to open up with him. McBryde was the only person who hadn't started out concerned only for Simões' 'own good,' and that had let Simões lower his guard where the security man was concerned. There were times when McBryde wondered if there hadn't been at least a trace of self destructiveness in Simões' attitude towards him—if a tiny part of the scientist hadn't been actually hoping that he would say or do or reveal something which would force McBryde to yank him from the Center.

But regardless of the exact nature of the tangled emotions, attitudes, motives, and hopes, Jack McBryde was the one person in the entire galaxy with whom Herlander Simões was prepared to be totally honest. He was also the only person who could take Simões to task for something like the scientist's self-flagellating habit of watching the recorded imagery of Francesca night after night without triggering Simões' instant, self- defensive anger.

'Let's be honest here, Jack,' the scientist said now, smiling crookedly. 'Sooner or later you're going to decide it's time to pull me. I know as well as you do that my efficiency is still dropping. And I'm not exactly what someone might call the life of the party when it comes to the rest of the team's morale, now am I? It's not even actively destructive, anymore. Not really. It's just this slow, grinding, wearing away. I'm so frigging tired, Jack. There's a big part of me that just wants to stop. Just wants it to beover. But there's another part of me that can't stop, because if I do, Frankie's just gone forever, and those bastards will just go ahead and forget about her. Sweep her under the rug.'

His voice had hardened with the last two sentences, and his hands locked around the beer bottle, squeezing it. Throttling it, really, McBryde thought, and wondered if he should try to distract Simões from his anger.

He knew he really ought to be consulting with the scientist's assigned therapist. He should have been offering his information to her, and asking her advice on how he could most constructively respond to Simões. Unfortunately, he couldn't. To his surprise, part of the reason he couldn't was because it would have been a betrayal of Simões' confidence. Despite what he'd said to the other man at their very first meeting about respecting his privacy, he'd never actually violated it, and he suspected that Simões knew it.

The other reason was more disturbing, when he allowed himself to confront it (which he did as seldom as possible). He was afraid. Afraid that in discussing Simões' mindset and anger, he might reveal altogether too much about certain thoughts of his own . . . especially to a trained Alignment therapist who was already thinking in terms of the potential security risk her patient might present.

Should I try and pull him up out of the anger, or just let him vent? He needs to let some of that pressure out, but it doesn't just go away when he does, does it? McBryde shook his head mentally. Of course it doesn't. It's like letting the pressure out only lets more oxygen in. Only makes the fire burn hotter in the end.

'You're still pounding away at Fabre and the rest, aren't you?' he asked out loud.

'You're the security guy,' Simões riposted with just a flash of anger directed at him. 'You're already reading all my mail, aren't you?'

'Well, yes,' McBryde admitted.

'Then you know, don't you?' Simões challenged.

'The question was what's known as a conversational gambit,' McBryde said just a bit flatly. 'A way of edging into a point that needs to be discussed with at least a modicum of tact, Herlander.'

'Oh.' Simões' eyes fell for a moment, then he shrugged. 'Well, in that case, yeah. I'm still . . . letting them know how I feel.'

'Somehow I suspect they've already got at least a vague idea about that,' McBryde said dryly, and Simões surprised both of them with a chuckle. A harsh chuckle, but still a chuckle.

Despite that, it wasn't really a laughing matter. Simões hadn't—quite—degenerated to the point of issuing actual threats in his twice-a-week e-mails to Martina Fabre, but the degree of anger—of hatred, to use an honest word for it—in those messages was distressingly clear. In fact, McBryde had quietly advised Fabre to take a few additional security precautions of her own. Had the man sending those messages been one whit less important