Shell nodded and laughed sharply before putting his Chameleon Sunglasses on. The glasses that changed color with the passing of time were now a deep violet. Like the color of Shell’s pain. A forgetfulness that could never be undone. That sort of pain.
“Send me the ring. I’m counting on you.”
Shell finished speaking, then disappeared.
Boiled stared silently at the newspaper cutting on the counter.
“Looks like we’ll be meeting again, Oeufcoque,” he muttered in a subdued tone, out of Shell’s earshot.
≡
The Doctor had just finished the last of his work on the display when Balot entered the office with Oeufcoque on her shoulder.
“Can we put off Balot’s court appearance, do you think?” Oeufcoque asked in a surprisingly plain tone of voice.
The Doctor, taken aback, replied, “You’re joking, right, Oeufcoque? You know what I’ve just done? Yes, of course, I’ve just finished transmitting the files of her conversation with the public prosecutor—along with the petition files—to the court secretariat. We’ve just had the preliminary courtroom proceedings over the monitor. That’s like asking to put the egg back into the shell after it’s broken.”
“But the egg’s not been fried yet.”
The Doctor gave a strangled groan.
“Fine. So why not get the raw egg, the electronic data that’s just finished dashing full-speed ahead toward the government offices, and tell it that, oh, actually we haven’t decided how to cook you yet. Try doing that now at this late hour, eh?”
At this point the Doctor stopped moving. He stared fixedly at Balot’s face.
“Really? Just like that?”
I don’t believe it, his body seemed to say, as he stooped over the display to check the data that he had just sent not a minute ago. The contents of the files were empty. Pure white. Not even a destination address. Right next to them was a new set of entirely different files. He opened them and found the data—that he was sure he had just sent—copied and preserved exactly. It was like magic.
“The abilities that your snarc gives you are truly incredible.”
The Doctor rose from his stooped posture and looked straight at Balot.
“There’s no one I’ve known who’s been able to manipulate electricity at this level. Or perhaps I should say no one has ever existed. The velocity of the electricity usually blows one’s mind. In your case, even though almost your whole body is accelerated to such a high level, you’re completely unaffected and it’s working perfectly. Amazing. Still…”
Balot wouldn’t raise her eyes. Her face was downcast, expressionless.
“Will you explain to me if there’s any relation between the fact that, on the one hand, it’s less than three hundred hours since your operation and you’re defying the boundaries of your threshold of consciousness, and on the other hand you refuse to appear in court? Do you want to shut yourself away in this hideaway—this shell—forever?”
Balot shook her head sideways. In small, repeated movements. And that was the extent of her answer.
On her shoulder Oeufcoque looked at the Doctor with a troubled face.
“She’s like a mascot, isn’t she, Oeufcoque?”
The Doctor spoke in a severe tone of voice. Balot raised her eyes with a jolt. But in the corner of Balot’s field of vision Oeufcoque calmly shrugged his shoulders. He stood there as if to say that this was his job, to look like a charming little stuffed animal.
The Doctor sighed, tired.
“She’s nominated us as Trustees, with responsibility for this case. She has to give the courtroom a satisfactory account—and response—regarding what happened. Have you explained this to the girl properly? Unless we do this, we can’t take a step further, and all there is left to do is sit and wait for the enemy to send his assassins.”
At that moment there was a pinging noise. The doorbell-like sound that signaled the arrival of an incoming data packet.
The data packet he had mailed a minute ago had just bounced back, target address unknown.
The Doctor peered in at the display dubiously. And with his other hand he pushed his glasses up in surprise.
–I have nobody, nowhere.
The message floated up as a single line of text.
This was Balot’s response. As if to say that this was the one thing she knew for certain.
“You mean that you can’t trust us?”
The Doctor’s voice was much gentler than before. Not ingratiating, but as if to say that at last he understood where she was coming from.
Balot shook her head.
Another ping.
–I’m afraid.
The Doctor was about to say something. Then another pinging sound.
–I don’t want to be betrayed.
The unaddressed mail had these messages, one by one.
“By no means are we going to betray you. We’ll use all our power to help solve this case. That’s right, isn’t it, Oeufcoque? Whatever dangers we come across…”
But Oeufcoque wouldn’t answer. He merely stood there, face deeply troubled.
“Hey, say something, will you?”
Another ping.
–You were both peeping at me for ages.
The Doctor opened his mouth in surprise. A further chime.
–The two of you brought me back to life, then raped me.
The Doctor read this with an astonished expression, then sat back down in the chair, drained of strength.
“Raped?”
Balot hung her head in shame. It wasn’t like she was trying to forcefully impart a message—more like words hidden away in the depths of her heart were suddenly revealed.
“When I was accepted onto the government’s research team, I received a couple of hundred counseling sessions, and I started my research after having a profound respect for human rights bashed into me, along with a deep understanding of ethics and morality.”
The Doctor spoke as if he were wringing out his voice.
“Well, I drowned in that ocean of counseling and became completely impotent. As a result, I split up with my wife. Even now, I’m almost proud of my sexual inadequacy—it’s like a badge of honor. There are even times when I start feeling like I’ve become a saint or something—”
“Erm, Doctor—”
Oeufcoque tried to interrupt, but the Doctor was having none of it.
“Very well. I’ll now give you a full account of what happened to you.”
The voice now showed a hint of anger, and Balot’s shoulders flinched. But the Doctor was polite through to the end. You couldn’t say he was calm and collected, but he showed no sign of needing to resort to more than words.
“In the first case, we made it our absolute priority to save your life. But there was no way of getting you from where you were to an emergency hospital. The enemy would have gotten wind of your whereabouts, and if you’d been in a hospital they would have come and finished you off. That’s where a quack like me comes in. As I diagnosed it, a normal skin graft wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough. You’d have met your maker long before your condition stabilized. And that’s where my craft comes in. On this point I think we’re in agreement, am I right?”
Balot gave a little nod. The Doctor was using plain words—not the slang of whores, or the affected language of posh princesses, but simple, direct language that hit Balot with everything she needed to know.
And that was good enough for Balot. The Doctor didn’t notice that this was one of the reasons that Balot was sad—it was good enough for the likes of her—he was, after all, the Doctor, and his mind was on other things.