From space! he thought. A construct of girders floated across the vision. Men in spacesuits flitted around it and incomprehensible machines with arms like crabs.
a tanaki displacement net, Center said. in this scenario, visager would enter the second federation without prior political unification. an unusual development.
The visions ceased, leaving only a mirrored wall at the end of a strange study.
Raj handed him a glass and sat in the chair facing him. John took a cautious sip of the sweet wine.
“Lad, you can leave here with no memories of what you’ve seen and heard,” he said calmly. “Or you can leave here as Center’s agent—as I was Center’s agent—to help get this planet out of the dead-end it’s trapped in and set its people free.”
“I’ll do it,” John blurted, then flushed again.
The words seemed to have come directly from his mouth without passing through his brain.
Raj shook his head. “This isn’t a game, John. You could die. You quite probably will die.”
The mirrored wall dissolved into its impossibly real pictures. This time they were much more personal. John—an older John—lay beside a hedgerow. His face was slack, eyes unblinking in the thin gray mist of rain. One hand lay on his stomach, a blue bulge of intestine showing around the fingers.
John sat stripped to the waist in a metal chair, waist and limbs and neck held by padded clamps; another device of levers and screws held his mouth open. A single bulb shone down from the ceiling. A Fourth Bureau specialist dressed in a shiny bib apron stepped up to him with a curved tool in his hands.
“Shame, Hosten, shame,” he said. “You have neglected your teeth. Still, I think this nerve is still sensitive.”
The curved shape of stainless steel probed and then thrust. The body in the chair convulsed and screamed a fine mist of blood into the cellar’s dark air.
Another John stood in the dock of a courtroom. The Republic’s flag stood on the wall behind the panel of judges. They whispered together, and then one of them raised his head:
“John Hosten, this court finds you guilty as charged of treason and espionage. You will be taken from this place to the National Prison, and there hung by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”
The visions died. John touched his tongue to his lips. “I’m not afraid to die,” he whispered. Then aloud: “I’m not afraid, and I know my duty. I’ll do what you ask, no matter how long it takes, no matter what the risks.”
“Good lad,” Raj said quietly, and gripped his shoulder. “You and your brother will both do your best.”
* * *
Jeffrey Farr looked at the mirrored sphere. “Seems like I’m going to be in action a lot,” he said.
He tried to sound calm, but the quaver was in his voice again. Those scenes of himself dying—gut-shot, burned, drowned, the Chosen executioners with whips made of steel-hook chains—they were more real than anything he’d ever seen. He could feel it. . . .
“If you say yes,” Raj said. “I’m not going to lie to you, son. Soldiering isn’t a safe profession; and if you refuse, the final war between the Land and your country may not be for a generation or more, possibly two.”
“Yeah, and the horse might learn to sing,” Jeffrey said. He was a little surprised at Raj’s chuckle. “And if I had kids, they’d be around when it happened,, anyway. I’ll do it. Somebody’s got to. A Farr does what has to be done.”
Unconsciously, his voice took on another tone with the last words; Raj nodded approvingly and handed him the balloon snifter.
“Good lad.”
“There’s just one thing,” Jeffrey said. He looked up; the . . . computer . . . wasn’t there—wasn’t anywhere, specifically, while he was in its mind—but that helped.
“Just one thing. If, ah, Center can predict things, and manipulate them the way you’re saying, couldn’t you change the Chosen? You showed me what would happen if the Chosen took over by themselves, didn’t you? Left to themselves, on their own.”
correct. Raj nodded.