“Is that an assurance,” Brigid inquired, “or a threat?”
“Neither. It’s simply the truth. Neither you, Kane nor Grant can ever again appear as yourselves in the villes. Your former lives no longer exist. I am hoping you will find a place for yourselves here.”
Kane tapped ash onto the floor, affecting not to notice Lakesh’s raised eyebrow. “Where is ‘here’? Is this the secret headquarters of the Preservationists?”
“Yes and no. The Preservationists as an organization does not exist. It’s a convenient categorization applied to anyone who opposes the barons and the Directorate. Essentially it’s a front, a diversion to conceal the real work that goes on here.”
“Real work?” Grant echoed.
“I represent, and belong to, the underground resistance who oppose the agenda to make humans an endangered species. I saw that you were worthy, Brigid, of contributing to that work. If Kane hadn’t involved you in his own personal crusade, you would have been brought here eventually. I fed you bits and pieces of information over the past year to see what you would do with them. A test, so to speak, and you passed. Your case was already decided. You arrived here by a different method than I envisioned, but you’re here where you belong, nevertheless.”
His gaze shifted to Kane. “Your case was already decided, too. However, the role you were selected to play was written to be very different. I had no idea you would break your conditioning so quickly, motivated by purely emotional impulses. You flew completely in the face of all my extrapolations. In fact, your actions may bring about an alternate event horizon, and I cannot describe how deeply that possibility intrigues me.”
Exhaling twin jets of smoke from his nostrils, Grant said, “I cannot describe how deeply you are irritating me. All right, you say you know about us. Who the flash-blasted hell are you ?”
“My full name is Mohandas Lakesh Singh. I was born in Kashmir, in the nation once known as India. Due to my extraordinarily high IQ, I came to America on a scholarship at age sixteen. When I was nineteen, I received my doctorate in cybernetics and quantum mechanics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I worked as a consultant for NASA for a year before being wooed away by a government-contract electronics company. I found myself working at a military base in Dulce, New Mexico.”
Kane made a spitting sound, as though trying to rid his lip of a shred of tobacco. It sounded disdainful. “You’re old, but you’re not that old.”
The corners of Lakesh’s eyes crinkled. “I was born in 1952, so yes, I am that old if you consider nearly two and a half centuries to be old. Of course, a century of that span was spent in cryonic stasis.”
Dead silence fell over the office. Kane stared speechless, first at him, then one by one at his companions. Swiftly he stood up,
“Thank you for the shower and the smoke,” he said crisply. “If you’ll return our property, I think we’ll be on our way.”
The mild humor vanished from Lakesh’s voice, and it rose in a reedy rasp. “Sit down , Kane! You have no ‘way’ to be on! Do you think you can leave this place, this room, unless I allow it?”
The old man’s lips worked, and he drew in a breath. “You’re so much like your father, and your grandfather. Brave and talented, but overconfident, reckless fools, and it takes so very little to knock your equilibrium out from under you. A few new concepts, new ideas, and you’re reeling around in shock. Don’t you understand that what you learned from the baron is but the merest tip of a vast iceberg?” He pointed a bony finger at him.
“You know just enough to get yourself and these others killed. The hidden mass of the iceberg is so huge, so thick, it stretches back many thousands of years. You can barely comprehend the events of the last two days, and you think you can strap on your gun, swagger out of here and blast your way to the truth? Rein in your inbred Magistrate’s arrogance. You’ve smashed your brains out against the iceberg, but you’re too ignorant to know it. You’re treading black water, waiting to drown. And you’ll sink straight to the bottom, straight to a fool’s hell, an exile’s hell, never knowing the whyness of it.”