primitive violence. For one thunderous instant the idea seemed almost feasible — a sudden grapple and lift, a body plunging into the lethal steel-spiked depths, a story about a freak accident…
But what sort of accident?
The guard rail was chest-high and, try as he might, Dallen was unable to invent an incident in which one man could be propelled to his death without suspected homicidal intent on the part of the other. Abruptly the crucial moment passed, its karma-potential fading. There was a sense of ponderous wheels, having hesitated, juddering into a new set of positions — and now Dallen was faced with the problem of how to address a person he saw only as a walking corpse.
'Hello, Gerald,' he said, smiling, glancing at the Spartan surroundings. 'Like to buy a ticket for the mutiny?'
Mathieu met his gaze squarely. 'That's yard-arm talk. Mister Christian.'
Christum? Dallen thought, disconcerted. Fix got to start reading books, the way Cona wanted.
Before he could compose a reply the odd little nonincident was over and the tall figure of Mathieu was moving out of sight between two cabins, ice-smooth blond hair glowing dully in the ship's dismal illumination. He was wearing immaculate silvery grey casuals — his idea of clothes suitable for manual work — and looked as composed and urbane as ever, but Dallen thought he had detected a difference in the man. Had it been in the hard calmness of the eyes? Was that typical of one who was stoking up on felicitin, or had Mathieu's skirmish with death- — by all accounts a remarkable escape — wrought some profound change in his character?
It makes no difference, Dallen told himself, rejecting the alien idea which had tried Co enter his mind, the idea that Mathieu was in the process of becoming a new person, one who might not deserve the fate which was in store for him. Dallen had little patience with any kind of violent criminal, but the species he had least time for were those who murdered innocents and then, while their appeals against execution were filtering through, composed books or holoplays about the sanctity of human life. He denied Mathieu any right to plead 'not guilty for reasons of resurrection'. It was essential that the issues of live and death, crime and punishment, sin and retribution should retain their old clarity — enough complication had already been introduced into his thoughts by the Karal London experiment.
Mathieu and London should have remained in separate compartments of his life, but they had a disconcerting way of merging in his thoughts like images in an antique stereo viewer, both of which had to contribute to make a rounded picture. London taught that after death there came new life. Mathieu had already enacted his own little pastiche on that theme — the shock of his 'death' and return to life was still reverberating in Dallen's system — and the philosophical implications continued to cloud his thinking about his family tragedy.
Given that there was no such thing as death in the former sense of the word, that it was merely the gateway to a new existence, could execution still be regarded as a penalty? What kind of punishment was it that simply advanced the next phase of an evildoer's life? And, going further, how serious a crime was murder if it meant that the victim had similarly been introduced to his own immortality?
'It makes no difference' Dallen repeated to himself, angered by the mental clamour following his deceptively bland encounter with Mathieu. He returned to his own cabin and spent some time examining the contents of the small travel bag he had privately labelled his execution kit.
It held a miscellany of items ranging from blades and wires to drug containers, gathered almost at random, any of which might become an unobtrusive murder weapon in suitable circumstance. No plan had yet crystallised, but some dark instinct kept drawing his attention to the most innocent-seeming object of the lot — a miniature spray can of paint he had taken from Madison City's transport workshops.
The first in-flight meeting with Silvia London was equally unsatisfactory from Dallen's viewpoint.
He had not seen her since her cathartic act of destroying the glass mosaic in her home, but he knew '| she was being accompanied on the journey by two ^ officers of the Anima Mundi Foundation. Both were ,: women and previously unknown to him. They had dealt with the considerable media interest given to Silvia before the start of the voyage, and now seemed to be coaching her for various kinds of public appearances in major cities. Their presence reminded Dallen that Karal London, in spite of the obviously cranky aspects of his operation, had been a determined and far-sighted man with a serious mission in life. It also made him wonder if he had allowed himself to be too much influenced by Renard's male chauvinist analysis of Silvia's relationship with the dead man.
Her reaction to the news of London's 'discarnatism' had, in a way, pleased him with its message that she was far from being the simplistic sexual timebomb described by Rick Renard — but there was another part of him, repressed throughout his adult life, which savoured the thought of being the first to bed a voluptuous young woman after she had been deprived of sex for two years. And his emotional dichotomy was made worse by the fact that he was quite unable to read Silvia's signals, had no way of knowing if what had passed between them meant everything or nothing. One interpretation was that he was a fantastically lucky man who had only to reach out his hand and take one of life's choicest offerings; another was that he was an overgrown adolescent with delusions inspired by a surplus of imagination, conceit and hormones.
I fail to see the difficulty, old son, he could imagine Renard saying to him, were he himself not one of the problem's parameters. Why not simply go ahead and try your lack?
Why not indeed? Dallen asked himself as he entered the Deck 4 compartment which contained the bank of mealomats and saw the black-clad figure of Silvia amid a group of five women at the machines. Unfortunately the question presupposed his being a normal man in normal circumstances. There was no allowance for internal confusions and conflicts, for his unmanning guilt over Cona and Mikel, for his dehumanising compulsion to annihilate Gerald Math-ieu, for his reluctance to resolve the question of Silvia too soon in case it transpired that it had all been a game which Renard had won in advance by virtue of his money, power and grinning confident insensitivity.
Silvia was discussing the choice of food with a companion, and as Dallen drew near he saw that, although slightly pale, she looked as though she had recovered from her period of trauma. He took in the firm-jawed face and the prominence of the lower lip, the massy fullness of breasts emphasised by the flatness of abdomen, the air of easy strength combined with femininity, and inside him was born a pain which had something to do with the fact that he had never read poetry and therefore did not have access to the words needed to let Silvia know how he felt about her. He was hesitating, overwhelmed, when she looked in his direction. She carried on her conversation without the slightest break, but her eyes engaged Dallen's and remained there, unwavering, while he moved towards another row of machines.
He smiled at her, then developed the conviction it was the same meaningless facial grimace he had made earlier on meeting Mathieu, and deliberately broke the visual contact by moving behind a drinks dispenser. Freed of the intense emotional pull, he selected food for Cona and himself, and when he emerged from an alley of cabinets Silvia was gone.
A few minutes later, back in his cabin, he found Cona sitting on the edge of her bed, blinking drowsily. Her smock had ridden up to her broadening hips, exposing a wisp of colourless hair at the juncture of puckered thighs. He twitched the hem of the garment down to her knees and began setting out dishes of food on the foldaway table. The air smelted of stale perspiration.
'Din,' Cona mouthed with effort. 'Di-in.'
'Very good,' Dallen said, blanking out his freshly renewed mental image of Silvia's face. 'Say dinner.
'Dm,' Cona shouted in sudden manic joviality, lurching towards the table. She picked up a spoon, holding it sideways in her fist, and reached for a dish of chocolate mousse. Dallen had found that if he gave in and permitted her to eat some dessert at the beginning of a meal it was then quite easy to coax her into having a fair amount of the main protein dish, but all at once the idea was intolerable.
Without speaking, he closed his hand over Cona's and steered the spoon towards a block of moulded salad. She froze for a moment, then began to resist with her considerable strength. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he had half-risen to his feet to gain leverage and had clamped Cona's head against his hip. Subduing her with furious ease, he forced her to take salad on to the spoon and was guiding it to her mouth when something prompted him to glance towards a mirrored wall at the for side of the room.
The tableau he saw there, with its ancient formalised composition — oppressor looming over the oppressed — could have been from any period in history. The medium could have been grainy 20th Century or age-darkened oil paint or perspective less woodcut, but the principal elements were the same. Faces of torturer and victim alike — both robbed of all humanity — turned towards the camera-artist as though demanding to go on record for
