Veil

Chapter 22

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Veil dreams.

Out of control in mind and body, he speeds down the endless corridor between the swirling gray walls in which figures move and occasionally beckon. He does not try to roll out of the dream, or even slow himself, for there is less agony here.

There is no agony here.

In the corridor, speeding toward the electric-blue horizon, there is no thirst or fever-heat or pain. He will not go back, he thinks. Never. He will suffer no more. He will fly along this corridor until he dies, if he is not dead already.

We're looking for heaven.

Familiar, disembodied voices call out from the mist on either side of him.

'He can guess all he wants to. By the time I let him in here again, you'll either be dead and buried in the riverbank or on your way to Washington for more detailed interrogation about your bosses and your network.'

'Ah, but you blew it, dummy,' Veil replies in a casual tone that issues from his chest, throat, and mouth as a series of soft chiming notes. 'If you're still interested in the truth, give my buddy Orville a little ding-a-ling. But you call him. Don't let anyone else do it for you.'

'You're a dead man, Kendry. I'm going to shoot your ass on the day when you're happy.'

For a few moments, Veil considers remaining silent; he no longer cares about anything but remaining in the state he is in.

'Good luck, Orville,' Veil says at last. 'I am at peace here, and I am happy; and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Even you can't reach into heaven. Shoot away.'

Chimes suddenly sound. They are outside himself, very loud, and reverberate in the corridor.

'Madison! Tell Parker the truth! Kill me with a bullet, not a lie!'

He does care.

His speed increases. If he is not dead, Veil thinks, he is certainly now very close to it. He is sorry he has never found the courage to look directly into the walls. He would look now, but he is going too fast; he is at once paralyzed and elongated; he feels as if his body is stretched out for miles behind him, and he cannot turn his head.

'Stop it! Kendry, I don't want you to die!'

Chimes. Bong! Bong! Bong!

'Parker! Hey, dummy, pick up the phone and make the call! Call Madison!'

His speed increases even more. The moaning, chiming walls flash past in a blur. Veil feels as if his body is coming apart, stretched so thin that there is nothing left but spinning atoms that somehow still carry the electrical charges of emotion and thought.

Then, suddenly, pain pierces heaven.

Something sharp, like a snake's fangs, sink into the floating atoms where his right shoulder had been. He wants to grab the wound, but he is stretched too thin. He cannot find his hand.

'Interesting,' Raskolnikov says. 'One really has to view your paintings out of the corner of the eye.'

'He can guess all he wants to.'

'You're a dead man, Kendry.'

'Sharon! I love you!'

'By the time I let him in here again—'

'Sharon, I'm sorry we didn't have time!'

We're looking for heaven.

Venom spurts into the wound, into and around the atoms. There is more pain. His atoms sting, swell, and throb. He can feel the venom, as hot and corrosive as acid, searing his atoms as it moves, seeps through the spaces where his limbs used to be. It is soaking into his space-body, inexorably heading for his brain. His atoms suddenly begin to vibrate in unison, producing low, booming chime sounds that steadily rise in pitch and volume until at last they are beyond hearing.

Then the venom fills his skull, soaking his brain, and he explodes soundlessly in a cloud of electric blue.

Chapter 23

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He erupted through a veil of electric blue consciousness to find himself lying on the ground on his back staring up at the night sky through lines of steel that were the bars forming the roof of his cage. His entire body was clenched in a seizure that was virtually epileptic; his hands flopped back and forth in front of his face and occasionally shot out to bang against the bars on either side of him; his knees knocked together, and the back of his head beat a syncopated tattoo against the ground. However, even in the midst of the neurological storm that was raging through his body, Veil noticed that his vision and thoughts seemed remarkably clear. It was as though he had somehow been anesthetized against the physical and mental agony he had been experiencing. He was still thirsty beyond any degree he could have previously imagined, but this need for water no longer crowded everything else out of his mind; he felt like some flesh-and-blood tuning fork vibrating, aglow, with raw energy and ready to fly apart.

And his right shoulder still hurt.

The needle pain he had felt had been just that, Veil thought—a needle. Somebody had given him a hot shot of a drug powerful enough to make him feel as if he could literally burst out of his cage, even as he flayed his skin and broke his bones in the process.

Then the seizure passed. Veil lay still for a few moments, sucking the cool night air into his wracked, dry lungs and staring at the stars. Finally he let his right hand drop to his side, and his fingers touched something soft. He rolled over in the cramped space and got up on his knees. Beside him were a large canteen, a neatly folded jumpsuit dyed in a camouflage pattern, and a leather pouch fastened at the top with a drawstring that was a thin leather thong.

The door to his cage was propped open with a stick.

With shaking hands, Veil struggled frantically to unscrew the top of the canteen. He finally managed to get the cap off, then straightened up so fast that he banged his head on the bars above him. He rolled over on his left side, lifted the canteen, and let the cool water pour into his mouth and splash over his face. Although he knew better, he swallowed the water in great, heaving gulps, and could not stop until his belly was painfully bloated and he vomited. There was plenty of water left, though, and he forced himself to wait for a minute or two, then lifted the canteen to his lips and drank more sparingly. When he felt his belly beginning to swell, he took the canteen away from his mouth. He shook it to reassure himself that there was still water left, then—despite the conviction that he could drink water steadily for a week without being sated—screwed the cap back on. The drug— which Veil assumed was some kind of super-amphetamine and which had probably been developed at the Army complex— and the water had carried him past his most immediate physical crisis.

He considered the possibility that Parker's gut abhorrence of torture had finally gotten the best of the colonel, and the stimulant, clothes, and water were merely Parker's invitation to him to go out into the night to be shot by some Mamba with a Sniperscope. He decided that it was unlikely; if Parker hail wanted to back down from his challenge to Veil's life, there would then be no sense in killing him. There were other means of interrogation, principally chemical. In any case, Veil thought, the question of who was responsible for his sudden deliverance, and why it was being offered, was resoundingly irrelevant. He was definitely not going to hang around any longer to brood over it. He picked up the clothes, pouch, and canteen, and crawled through the narrow steel aperture to freedom.

Feeling as if he would take off and fly away if he did not concentrate on staying grounded, Veil ran low and hard through the moon-shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, streaking across the dirt practice field used by the Mambas to the riverbank. He set the articles he was carrying down in the tall, thick grass, then rolled down the steep incline of the bank into the river. This time he was prepared for the gelid punch of the water, and the agony of