My smile spread to an open grin. “And you’re looking good for a guy I last saw raining in pieces down the face of Hell.”
He brushed that off with an irritable nod. “Ancient history.”
“Feels like fucking yesterday”. He flushed, and his gaze flicked down toward his folded hands. His fingers twitched. “That was-” He shook his head and looked back at me. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to save your life.”
I shrugged.
“Capital Forcible Contact Upcaste, Michaelson. Were you awake enough to remember that part? You’re on full-sense log murdering a Leisureman-”
I laughed at him.
“You think this is funny?”
“What am I supposed to call you? Rababal? Simon Faller? Gofer?” He flushed darker. “Michaelson-”
“That’s not my name.”
His fingers twitched again. Missing that platinum coin, I bet. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing?”
“Same as usual,” I told him. “The kind I win.”
He stared at me, then swung that stare to my wrists and my diaper and my dead legs, the featureless walls and the blank inside of the door, inviting me to stare with him, to take in the reality of my cell, of the Buke, of Earth. “You’re out of your mind.”
“There is,” I admitted, not without a certain pride, “a history of insanity in my family.”
“You have one hope of coming out of this alive, Michaelson. One. And that is cooperation-”
“I told you that’s not my name.”
He rolled his eyes. “What am I supposed to call you, then? Caine? Shade?Tell me.”
“Last time I was on Earth,” I said, “the proper mode of address from a Professional to an Administrator was sir.”
He stared.
“Let’s give it a try, shall we?”
His mouth had to work for a while before it could chew out some words.
“You are insane.”
“And you can kiss my upcaste ass, you lackey fuck.”
His lips started flapping. “Do you-are-you don’t-”
“I’m not the one in trouble, Faller. You are. If the Board of Governors wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. I’d have never woken up. Instead somebody invested serious coin in neurosurgery, and instead of being the star of a show trial for killing Vilo, I’m sequestered with political prisoners. And instead of Soapy interrogators, I’ve got good old Rababal here to have a chat with me about cooperation. Which means shit’s already going bad enough on Home that somebody thinks they need me to fix it. So start kissing my ass or kiss yours good-bye.” I batted my eyelids at him. “You pick.”
His lips stopped flapping long enough to peel back off his teeth. “It’s not just you, Michaelson. We know about your daughter, and we know where she is-”
“Simon, Simon, Simon.” I could peel lips too, and my teeth were bigger than his. “Do you really want to bring my family into this?”
His lower lip snuck back up a little.
I cocked my head toward him. “Not that I’m worried about her; Faith’s defended in ways you can’t imagine. But if you want to do the we’ll-hurt-your-family thing just on principle, I’m into it. Maybe you never saw the cube of what happened to Vinson Garrette.”
His brows drew together and those lips tried for a disbelieving smile. “Are you threatening me?”
“Nah. I was just thinking how, y’know, with these bedrails for leverage-having the bed anchored to the floor makes it a great platform, real stable, just perfect-from here I can kick your head right the fuck off your shoulders. Right off. Like a tee ball. Rrrip. Bounce bounce bounce.”
His right eyelid flickered. Color drained down his cheeks into his beard. “I read your chart-your legs. . your legs don’t-”
“Yeah, Simon. That’s right. My legs don’t. You believe everything you read?”
A sharp chuff-an aspiriated ki-ya-and a twist of my abdominals, which are real damn strong, snapped my diaper toward his face, and those nervous hands flew up like startled pigeons and he jerked away hard enough to slide sideways off the chair and dump himself ass-first on the floor, and he got up madder than a teargassed bear because of course neither of my dead legs even cleared the rail.
“Just kidding.” I grinned at him. “And I was lying about your head coming off anyway. I’m an asshole like that.”
He took a step toward me and one of those nervous hands made a fist that swung up by his shoulder. And paused. And hung there while rage-swollen veins writhed across his forehead.
Which told me everything I’d been pretending to know had actually been true after all.
My grin widened. “You can fuck off now, Faller. Don’t come back until the Bog’s ready to deal.”
Those veins kept on writhing, but the fist opened, and the hand fell to his side.
He lowered his head. “I don’t know what else I was expecting,” he muttered. “Why should it be different now?”
He half sat, half fell back into the injection-molded chair and let himself slump against the edge of the desk. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Not one little bit. And why should you? Being exactly who you are has always gotten you exactly what you want.”
What the hell was he playing at now? “I wouldn’t go that far-”
“Probably work this time too.” He sounded like he was talking more to himself than to me. He kept his head down, like there was something on his face he didn’t want me to see. “Just tell me one thing, Michaelson. Caine. Whatever. Why is it only the bastards ever win?”
I didn’t answer. I was pretty sure which bastard he was talking about. He just sat there with his head down and those once-nimble fingers laced together so he could twist them back and forth against each other, working them tight as his voice, and he went on.
“Why is it the people who play by the rules-the people who just do their jobs and mind their manners and save their pay and really don’t want anything more out of life than one goddamned break end up working away their whole lives and every time it looks like one damned ray of sunshine might fall into their lives there’s some bastard with a shovel to tell you No, that’s just the mouth of your grave before he starts piling the dirt in on top of you.” His fingers twisted tight enough that his knuckles crackled like stiff cellophane.
“That’s all I want to know, Michaelson. You explain it to me, then I’ll go tell the Board, and you can go ahead and cut my damned throat. Again.”
“Cut your throat-did you play that fucking Adventure?”
My voice came out thick, and so raw it surprised me. Twenty-five years later, and I here I was again, looking at his throat and wondering if he tasted like pork. “At least you lived through it, which is more than can be said for fucking near everybody else. What was the deal? You bird-dog us into there and get a free emergency transfer out when things get hairy? The Fireball fake-your-death bit was good, Rababal. Smart. That’s what stopped me from hunting your jiggling ass.” Good thing I was strapped to the bed. Otherwise I’d have made a try for him, dead legs and all. “They hung me from a fucking cross. And Marade-”
“I know.”
His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“I-have the cubes. All of them. They. . didn’t tell me about the Black Knives. You have to believe that, Caine. I didn’t know, going in. I wouldn’t have done it, not even for-”
“For what?” My breath had gone hot and harsh in my throat. “Not even for what?”
“It was my shot, Caine. The only one I ever got. I’d been a location scout-a bird dog, yes; we know what Actors call us-for fifteen years. Because the Scheduling Board didn’t think I could be marketable as a leading man, and I, well, yes, I knew it; I didn’t have the sense of humor to be a funny sidekick. So I waited. And I worked. I put in my time. Paid my dues. And finally, at forty-when most Actors, the ones that live that long, are thinking of retirement. .”