The man was looking at him with contemptuous amusement now, almost smiling. ‘Look at you,’ he said, as if he had expected no better. He studied Carver for a moment longer, then bent to his food again.
Carver felt the drug suffuse his body almost at once. It started with a fluttering in his chest, and for a minute he worried that he was having a heart attack. ‘Hey. . .’ he said, but he petered out, alarmed at the waver in his own voice. He held up his hands in front of his face. They were shaking. Hang on — were those his hands? They looked a little unfamiliar, actually. And he couldn’t seem to control them. But. . . he remembered the injury that he could see on one of them, the bloody rent in the white fabric of the glove. That was pretty telling, no? Hmm. . . It really didn’t matter, did it? In fact, the more he considered it, the less important it seemed.
‘The dragon says I should release you,’ said the man suddenly, making Carver jump.
‘Whaaaat?’ he asked, his voice thick and syrupy, turning to face the crazy dragon-man. Had he heard that right, or was it the fader screwing with his mind? He had taken some fader, hadn’t he? Shit. . . how long ago had that been? Where, for that matter, was he?
‘It says I should release you. In the morning.’ The man was watching Carver quite closely now, perhaps gauging his reaction. ‘You doing okay on that stuff?’ he asked, sounding more irritated than concerned.
‘I. . .’ said Carver, his voice little more than a croak. ‘. . . Yeah. . .’
‘The dragon says that you’ve done well, that you can now be trusted. Can you be trusted?’
His scrutiny of Carver intensified, those distant eyes seeming to bore right through Carver’s skull and focus on something the other side. Carver wasn’t sure if he could be trusted or not, truth be told. He couldn’t seem to remember. He supposed it depended to a large extent on the circumstances.
It was difficult to grasp the significance of what was happening here. His gaze was drawn again to the large window, the grim and frozen rocky shore outside. The motion of the belt objects, their distribution, seemed random at first glance, didn’t it? Even as you studied it more intently, you could certainly miss the pattern. But Carver thought he saw it now. There was a pattern, an order, a dark, unifying thread that ran through the apparent white-noise of rubble. He could almost see it. . . He could see it. He could. . .
He turned his head back to face the crazy dragon-man. It wobbled heavily on his neck, which was a funny sensation, really. He laughed, and the sound filled the cockpit like pillows of down. The asteroids were moving out there beyond the window — dancing, really fucking getting down with it — and Carver studied the patterns in their motions. Order within chaos. Patterns. . .
‘Sure,’ he said, having completely forgotten what the question was now.
‘I’m not sure, myself,’ replied the man. ‘But I will, of course, do as the dragon says. It always knows best.’ He sniffed sadly and leant back in the flight seat. Carver sensed that he wanted to say more, perhaps spill all his secrets and confess his fears. A problem shared and all that. But he didn’t.
‘Yeah,’ Carver heard his own voice say, somewhere off in the distance, echoing towards him through the tunnels of the ship. It was quite funny, really, this whole situation — certainly nothing to worry about. Had he been worried? He thought so. Well, it seemed laughable now.
‘That stuff will help you sleep, if you let it,’ said the man. He had his own eyes closed now, and he looked childish and vulnerable, a busy little tyke worn out by the day’s excitement. ‘I might have one myself in a bit.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carver’s voice again. Sleep? Probably a good idea, though an alien-sounding concept.
‘The dragon will tell us what to do tomorrow,’ said the man with finality.
‘From one killer to another,’ said the distant Carver-voice, ‘you work in strange ways, man.’ He wondered if he should be saying this, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop the words from coming. They flew into the air like slow-motion artillery shells, blossoming in explosions of sound that shook the world, completely independent of his will. ‘But you get the job done, my friend.’ He was okay, really, the crazy dragon-man. But was he actually going to set Carver free in the morning? He sighed deeply, feeling the tension flood out of his body, draining from his toes into the warm air of the cockpit like a bad humor exorcised. Did it matter? Not right now — he felt good. He loosened the Velcro straps then closed his eyes and rolled onto his side. The guy had said the fader would help him sleep, and that seemed to be working out pretty well. He yawned hugely, with an interesting, pleasantly weary feeling.
‘I didn’t,’ replied the crazy dragon-man in a small, tired voice, ‘get the job done.’ And then he said no more.
Carver drifted on billowing sheets of darkness, borne on vacuous currents of whispering shadow, rocked by the gently wallowing shuttle, into the deepest slumber he had ever known.
He had no idea of the time when he awoke, feeling oddly disassociated from his own senses. At first, he thought that the light that flooded his eyes was part of a dream — it seemed too bright, too pure, to be real. But it dawned on him gradually, as he lay there staring at the grilled and panelled wall of the bridge, that he was genuinely awake, and still in the shuttle. The crazy dragon-man had given him some fader. He remembered now.
And then it spoke to him:
‘Prisoner Carver, listen to me. . .’
A bolt of shock went through his nervous system like a flash-fire, but a fire whose flames were ice-cold, chilling him to the bone. His spine seized solid, frozen into position. He felt suddenly tiny, vulnerable, and utterly alone, curled immobile on the chair, pinned by fear. Had he really heard that?
‘You’re not imagining it, Carver. You really can hear me.’
‘No,’ he whispered, his eyes so wide that they threatened to pop out of their sockets and onto his cheeks. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ said the voice matter-of-factly. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Carver’s chest was suddenly aquiver with fright, making it hard to speak at all. ‘You’re a fucking drug,’ he managed to spit, keeping his voice low so as not to awaken the crazy dragon-man sleeping in the next seat. ‘Fader.’
‘No,’ said the voice. ‘I am. . .’
Carver knew who it was, of course, or at least who his drug-addled mind wanted him to think it was. ‘. . . The dragon,’ he finished in a hoarse whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe it. No. That guy is fucking crazy. I’m not crazy. I don’t believe it!’
‘You raped and murdered a woman in front of her children,’ said the dragon calmly, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling the world with its cold implacability.
‘No. . .’
‘Then you raped and murdered those children. Children. You cooked and ate parts of their bodies. And you wish to discuss sanity with me? Grow up, Prisoner Carver, and know yourself for what you are.’
‘No. . . How do you know that?’ he demanded, his voice rising in pitch. He could see the blood, the scattered and degraded body-chunks, the tiny gnawed fingers and shredded clothes. He saw himself standing there terrified, revolted and elated in equal measure, a clump of golden hair in one hand. His breathing quickened as excitement and horror warred within him. It was true. He had done those things. And it was obvious, really, how the dragon knew: it was a product of his own imagination. In fact, why was he even speaking to it? Perhaps he had gone crazy. When in Rome, etcetera. . .