I’m pushed into the drawing room and followed by my escort. The guards wait outside. Asmus is seated in plush comfort and Bess is standing by his side. Her left eye is black and there’s a cut on her cheek. I look at Asmus with contempt, jaws clenched. Bess shakes her head almost imperceptibly to say don’t.
“What an aggravating tackychemist you’re turning out to be,” Asmus says. “And stupid, too. I mean, imagine just setting off for a stroll in the woods when you’re centuries from home. That is stupid isn’t it?”
“You are selling arms, you mad fuck,” I say.
Asmus exaggerates the taking of offense. “You speak like that to a man who just sprung you from the brig?” He looks at Bess as if seeking concurrence. “Add ingratitude to the list. Oh, by the way, did Mancini introduce himself?”
I turn to see a man affecting stony professionalism. “Meet Phil Mancini.”
“Today I saw fewer than a dozen men slaughter a platoon in seconds,” I say.
“It really shouldn’t have taken that many men; not with the weapons I’ve given them. You see, it’s about training. I can equip them with the best arms to be had, but at the end of the day, they need to know what they’re doing with them. They need to perform like professionals.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why do this?” Asmus sits back in his chair and I notice Bess wince as he takes her hand.
“Do what? Help kill soldiers? Isn’t that what they’re trying to do to each other anyway? Don’t try to make out that that’s my doing. And when you’re dead, do you really care if it’s a lead ball or a steel bullet that got the job done?”
“Killing a dozen humans in one burst of fire isn’t the same as a 50/50 chance of killing one with a musket shot.”
“You always were a second-rate mathematician, Joad. Don’t you see that these weapons will accelerate the war to an outcome? And I’m pretty sure that that’d reduce the total death count in the end. Besides, where’s your sense of humor? Isn’t it a delicious irony that 2nd Amendment rights are what allowed me to get my hands on these weapons, and now they’re being used by British troops to massacre a well-armed militia? Joyous, no? Come on, give me a smile at least.”
“Yeah, joyous, Kasper.”
“And I have other jokes to try out. All this is no more than a test run. Imagine the possibilities–the scenarios. Savage Vikings arriving on the shores of England all ready to slaughter the monks or whoever the hell they slaughtered, and what happens instead is that they walk into a mist of steel, blossoming into geysers of red and gore. Or the mighty Mongols descending on some defenseless village ready to serve up their brutal reign of terror and instead they find themselves up against the blast wave of a 50,000 kiloton nuclear device.” There’s glee in his face. “I mean, just how humorless would you have to be not to see the funny side of that?” He waves his hands. “Run away! Run away! Ha.” I look behind me and see that his creature Mancini was unable to suppress a smile. “See what real power is?”
“And that’s your plan?”
“Plan is a strong word. It’ll be more of a whim if I get around to doing it.” He looks up at Bess. “I’m prone to whims, am I not, Elizabeth?” She glances up at me. I sense that assaulting my TMA values is as much a part of his intent as massacring Vikings. This line of conversation will go nowhere.
“When will you set the TMAers free?” I ask.
“As I told you before, they’re already free to leave any time.”
“Give us back the accelerators.”
“Well, that’s quite an ask, Joad.”
“You’re feeding them mush, you bastard. Some of them are getting sick. They need medical attention. It’s only a matter of time before someone dies.”
“So dramatic.”
“What have they really done to you, Kasper? Abducting the entire TMA team seems like an overreaction to the innocent consensus among them that you’re a worthless little prick. Deep down, you can’t argue with that,” I say. Asmus’s eyes open wide with rage, but he quickly regains his composure and smiles. Why the hell did I say that, just for a moment’s gratification? I’m just pleased that Gallie didn’t see it.
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t kill you?” he asks.
“That’d be murder, Kasper.”
“No, that’s a legal reason. I mean a moral reason.” I hear Mancini chortle behind me. “What am I to do with you?”
“Send me home. Send us all home.”
Asmus affects to weigh this up. “Joad, what have you achieved in your life?” He puts on a concerned, paternal look. “I mean, you sit in the middle of nowhere waiting for some poor bastard in Seoul to haplessly make the wrong chemical cocktail and then you reflect a few tachyons to shut it down. That’s it. Hell, you don’t even do that. You do theory. Theory that might increase the efficiency of detection by a percentage point or two. Doesn’t it strike you that what you do is utterly insignificant?”
“It doesn’t.”
“No?”
“You’re a Tardis full of shit, Kasper.” He shakes his head and again looks up at Bess as if expecting her to defend him. She glances at him and then at me. I can tell she wants this to end with me intact and I’m not helping.
“You know Joad, you might not like me or what I’m doing, but you can’t deny that I’m significant.”
